BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

BROWNING'S ITALY 

BROWNING'S ENGLAND 

A GUIDE TO MYTHOLOGY 

ANCIENT MYTHS IN MODERN POETS 

LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

HAWTHORNE'S COUNTRY 
THE POETS' NEW ENGLAND 




Browning at 23 (London 1835) 



Browning and His 
Century 



BY 
HELEN ARCHIBALD CLARKE 

Author of "Browning's Italy," "Browning's England," etc. 



ILLUSTRATED 

FROM 
PHOTOGRAPHS 



Garden City New York 
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
1912 



c ^ 



Copyright, 1912, by 

DOUBLEDAY, PaGE & Co. 

All rights reserved, including that of 
translation into foreign languages, 
including the Scandinavian 



(g:C!.A3287in 



Co 
THE BOSTON BROWNING SOCIETY 

IN COMMEMORATION OF THE 

BROWNING CENTENARY — 1812-1912 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 



PAGE 



The Battle of Mind and Spirit ^ 

CHAPTER II 

The Century's End: Promise of Peace . . . . T7 

CHAPTER III 
Political Tendencies ^1^ 

CHAPTER IV 
SocLA-L Ideals ^''^ 

CHAPTER V 
Art Shibboleths ^l'' 

CHAPTER VI 
Classic Survivals ^'^'^ 

CHAPTER VII 
Prophetic Visions ^^^ 



Vll 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Browning at 23 (London 1835) . . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Paracelsus 38^^ 

Herbert Spencer 94 

David Strauss 112'' 

Cardinal Wiseman 120-^ 

William Ewart Gladstone 160^ 

William Morris 196»^ 

John Burns 208*^ 

Alfred Tennyson . 250^ 

A. C. Swinburne 260^ 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti 266 '^ 

George Meredith 272*^ 

Euripides 296*^ 

Aristophanes 306"^ 

Walter Savage Landor SSO"^ 

Browning at 77 (1889) 360*^ 



IX 



BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 



PROLOGUE 

TO ROBERT BROWNING 

"Say not we know but rather that we love. 
And so we know enough." Thus deeply spoke 
The Sage; and in men's stunted hearts awoke 
A haunting fear, for fain are they to prove 
Their life, their God, with yeas and nays that move 
The mind's uncertain flow. Then fierce outbroke, — 
Knowledge, the child of pain shall we revoke.'^ 
The guide wherewith men climb to things above.^^ 
Nay, calm your fears! 'Tis but the mere mind's knowing, 
The soul's alone the poet worthy deeming. 
Let mind up-build its entities of seeming 
With toil and tears! The toil is but for showing 

How much there lacks of truth. But 'tis no dreaming 
When sky throbs back to heart, with God's love beaming. 




THE BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 

jURING the nineteenth century, which 
has already receded far enough into the 
perspective of the past for us to be able to 
take a comprehensive view of it, the advance 
guard of the human race found itself in a 
position entirely different from that ever 
before occupied by it. Through the knowledge 
of cosmic, animal, and social evolution gradu- 
ally accumulated by the laborious and careful 
studies of special students in every depart- 
ment of historical research and scientific 
experiment, a broader and higher state of 
self-consciousness was attained. Mankind, 
on its most perceptive plane, no longer pinned 
its faith to inherited traditions, whether of 
religion, art, or morals. Every conceivable 
fact and every conceivable myth was to be 
tested in the laboratory of the intellect, even 
the intellect itself was to undergo dissection, 
with the result that, once for all, it has been 
decided what particular range of human 
knowledge lies within the reach of mental 



4 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

perception, and what particular range of 
human knowledge can be grasped only through 
spiritual perception. 

Such a momentous decision as this in the 
history of thought has not been reached 
without a long and protracted struggle extend- 
ing back into the early days of Christianity, 
nor, it may be said, is the harmony as yet 
complete, for there are to-day, and perhaps 
always will be, human beings whose conscious- 
ness is not fully orbed and who either seek 
their point of equilibrium too entirely in the 
plane of mind or too entirely in the plane of 
spirit. 

In the early days, before Christianity came 
to bring its *' sword upon earth," there seems 
to have been little or no consciousness of 
such a struggle. The ancient Hindu, observ- 
ing Nature and meditating upon the universe, 
arrived intuitively at a perception of Ufa 
and its processes wonderfully akin to that 
later experimentally proved by the nineteenth 
century scientist, nor did he have a suspicion 
that such truth was in any way antagonistic 
to religious truth. On the contrary, he con- 
sidered that, by it, the beauty and mystery 
of religion was immeasurably enhanced, and, 
letting his imagination play upon his intui- 
tion, he brought forth a theory of spiritual 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 5 

evolution in which the world to-day is bound 
to recognize many elements of beauty and 
power necessary to any complete conception 
of religion in the future. 

Even the Babylonians made their guesses 
at an evolutionary theory of the universe. 
Greek philosophy, later, was permeated with 
the idea, it having been derived by them 
perhaps from the Chaldeans through the 
Phoenicians, or if the theories of Aryan mi- 
grations be correct, perhaps through inher- 
itance from a remote Aryan ancestry. 

When Christian thought gained its hold 
upon the world, the account of creation given 
in Genesis became so thoroughly impressed 
upon the minds of men that it was regarded 
as the orthodox view, rooted in divine revela- 
tion, and to question it was to incur the 
danger of being called an atheist, with its 
possibly uncomfortable consequences of being 
martyred. 

Strangely enough, the early Church adopted 
into its fold many pagan superstitions, such 
as a belief in witchcraft and in signs and 
wonders, as well as some myths, but this 
great truth upon which the pagan mind had 
stumbled, it would have none of. 

These two circumstances — the adoption 
on the part of Christianity of pagan supersti- 



6 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

tions and Its utter repudiation of the pagan 
guesses upon evolution, carrying within it 
the germs of truth, later to be luiearthed by 
scientific research — furnished exactly the 
right conditions for the throwing down of the 
gauntlet between the mind and the spirit. 
The former, following intellectual guidance, 
found itself coming more and more into 
antagonism with the spirit, not yet freed from 
the trammels of Imagination. The latter, 
guided by imagination, continued to exercise 
a mythopoeic faculty, which not only brought 
it more and more into antagonism with the 
mind, but set up within its own realm an 
internecine warfare which has blackened the 
pages of rehglous history with crimes and 
martyrdoms so terrible as to force the con- 
viction that the true devil In antagonism to 
spiritual development has been the imagina- 
tion of mankind, masquerading as verity, and 
not yet having found its true function in art. 
Regarded from the point of view of the 
student of Intellectual development, this con- 
flict of two thousand years has the fascination 
of a great drama of which the protagonist is 
the mind struggling to free the spirit from 
its subjection to the evil aspects of the Imagi- 
nation. Great thinkers in the field of science, 
philosophy, and religion are the dramatis 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 7 

personce, and in the onward rush of this world- 
drama the sufferings of those who have fallen 
by the way seem insignificant. 

But when the student of history takes his 
more intimate survey of the purely human 
aspects of the struggle, heartrending, indeed, 
become the tragedies resulting from the exer- 
cise of human bigotry and stupidity. 

Indignation and sorrow take possession of 
us when we think upon such a spectacle as 
that of Roger Bacon, making ready to per- 
form a few scientific experiments before a 
small audience at Oxford, confronted by an 
uproar in which monks, fellows, and students 
rushed about, their garments streaming in 
the wind, crying out, "'Down with the magi- 
cian!" And this was only the beginning of 
a persecution which ended in his teaching 
being solemnly condemned by the authorities 
of the Franciscan order and himself thrown 
for fourteen years into prison, whence he 
issued an old and broken man of eighty. 

More barbarous still was the treatment of 
Giordano Bruno, a strange sort of man who 
developed his philosophy in about twenty- 
five works, some prose, some poetry, some 
dialogues, some comedies, with such enticing 
titles as "The Book of the Great Key," "The 
Explanation of the Thirty Seals," "The Ex- 



8 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

pulsion of the Triumphant Beast," "The 
Threefold Minimum," "The Composition of 
Images," "The Innumerable, the Immense 
and the Unfigurable." His utterances were 
vague, especially to the intellects of his time, 
yet not so vague that theology, whether 
Catholic or Calvinistic, did not at once take 
fright. 

He held that the investigation of nature 
in the unbiased light of reason is our only 
guide to truth. He rejected antiquity, tradi- 
tion, faith, and authority; he exclaimed, 
"Let us begin by doubt. Let us doubt till 
we know." Acting upon these principles, he 
began to unfold again that current of Greek 
thought which the system imposed by the 
Church had intercepted for more than a thou- 
sand years, and arrived at a conception of 
evolution prefiguring the modern theories. 

He conceived the law of the universe to be 
unceasing change. "Each individual," he 
declared, "is the resultant of innumerable 
individuals; each species is the starting point 
for the next." Furthermore, he maintained 
that the perfecting of the individual soul is 
the aim of all progress. 

Tenets so opposite to the orthodox view of 
special creation and the fall of man could not 
be allowed to go unchallenged. It is to be 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 9 

remembered that he was a priest in holy 
orders in the Convent of St. Dominic, and in 
the year 1576 he was accused by the Provin- 
cial of his order of heresy on one hundred 
and thirty counts. He did not await his 
trial, but fled to Rome, thence to northern 
Italy, and became for some years a wanderer. 
He was imprisoned at Geneva; at Toulouse he 
spent a year lecturing on Aristotle; in Paris, 
two years as professor extraordinary in the 
Sorbonne; three years in London, where he 
became the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and 
influenced the philosophy of both Bacon and 
Shakespeare. Oxford, however, was un- 
friendly to his teachings and he was obliged 
to flee from England also. Then he wandered 
for five years from city to city in Germany — 
at one time warned to leave the town, at 
another excommunicated, at another not even 
permitted to lodge within the gates. Finally, 
he accepted the invitation of a noble Venetian, 
Zuane Mocenigo, to visit Venice and teach 
him the higher and secret learning. The 
two men soon quarreled, and Bruno was 
betrayed by the count into the hands of the 
Inquisition. He was convicted of heresy in 
Venice and delivered to the Inquisition in 
Rome. He spent seven years in its dungeons, 
and was again tried and convicted, and called 



10 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

upon to recant, which he stoutly refused to 
do. Sentence of death was then passed upon 
him and he was burned at the stake on Feb- 
ruary 17, 1600, on the Campo de' Fiori, 
where there now stands a statue erected by 
Progressive Italy in his honor. 

His last words were, "I die a martyr, and 
willingly." Then they cast his ashes into 
the Tiber and placed his name among the 
accused on the rolls of the Church. And 
there it probably still remains, for no longer 
ago than 1889, when his statue was unveiled 
on the ninth of June, on the site of his burn- 
ing, in full view of the Vatican, Pope Leo XIII, 
it is said, refused food and spent hours in 
an agony^of prayer at the foot of the statue 
of St. Peter. Catholic, and even Protestant, 
denunciation of Bruno at this time showed 
that the smoke from this particular battle 
in the war of mind with spirit was still far 
from being laid. 

With the fate of Giordano Bruno still 
fresh in his mind, Galileo succumbed to the 
demands of the Inquisition and recanted, 
saying that he no longer believed what he, 
himself, with his telescope had proved to be 
true. 

"I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner 
and on my knees, and before your Eminences, having before 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 11 

my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, 
abjure, curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the 
movement of the earth. " 

If this recantation had brought any com- 
fort or peace into his hfe it might have been 
hard to forgive Gahleo's perjury of himself. 
His persecution, however, continued to the 
end. He was exiled from his family and 
friends, and, even when he had become blind 
and wasted by sorrow and disease, he was 
still closely watched lest he might utter the 
awful heresy that the earth moved. 

A hundred years later than this, when 
Buffon attempted to teach the simple truths 
of geology, he was deposed from his high posi- 
tion and made to recant by the theological 
faculty of the Sorbonne. The man who 
promulgated geological principles, as firmly 
estabUshed to-day as that of the rotation of 
the earth upon its axis, was forced to write: 
"I declare that I had no intention to contra- 
dict the text of Scripture; that I believe most 
firmly all therein related about the creation, 
both as to order of time and matter of fact. 
I abandon everything in my book respecting 
the formation of the earth, and generally all 
which may be contrary to the narrative of 
Moses." 

Such are the more heinous examples of 



12 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

the persecution of the men who discovered 
the truths of science. To these should be 
added the wholesale persecution of witches 
and magicians, for unusual knowledge of any 
sort ran the chance of being regarded as 
contrary to biblical teaching and of being 
attributed to the machinations of the Prince 
of Darkness. 

Every new step made in the direction of 
scientific truth has had thus to face the most 
determined opposition. Persecution by torture 
and death died out, but up to the nineteenth 
century, and well on through it, denunciation, 
excommunication, suppression, the loss of hon- 
orable positions have all been used as weapons 
by church or university in the attempt to 
stamp out whatever it considered dangerous 
and subverting doctrines of science. 

The decisive battle was not to be inaugu- 
rated until the latter half of the nineteenth 
century, with the advent in the field of such 
names in science as Spencer, Darwin, Tyndall 
and Huxley, and such names in biblical 
criticism as Strauss and Renan. 

The outposts, it is true, had been won by 
advancing scientific thought, for step by step 
the Church had compromised, and had ad- 
mitted one scientific doctrine after another 
as not incompatible with biblical truth. But 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 13 

now, not only theology, the imperfect armor 
in which the spirit had been clothed, was 
attacked, but the very existence of spirit 
itself was to be questioned. The thinking 
world was to be divided into materialists and 
supernaturalists. Now, at last, mind and spirit, 
who in the ages long gone had been brothers, 
were to stand face to face as enemies. Was 
this mortal combat to end in the annihilation 
of either, or would this, too, end in a compro- 
mise leading to harmony? 

At the dawn of this century, in 1812, 
came into the world its master poetic mind. 
I say this to-day without hesitation, for no 
other English poet of the century has been 
so thoroughly aware of the intellectual tenden- 
cies of his century, and has so emotionalized 
them and brought them before us under the 
humanly real conditions of dramatic utter- 
ance. 

It is not surprising, considering this fact, 
that in his second poem, written in 1835, 
Browning ventures into the arena and at 
once tackles the supreme problem of the age, 
what is to be the relation of mind and spirit? 

It is characteristic of the poetic methods, 
which dominated his work, that he should 
have presented this problem through the per- 
sonality of a historical figure who played no 



14 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

inconsiderable part in the intellectual develop- 
ment of his time, though not a man to whom 
general historians have been in the habit 
of assigning much space in their pages. 
Browning, however, as Hall Griffin informs 
us, had been familiar with the name of 
Paracelsus from his childhood, of whom he 
had read anecdotes in a queer book, Wanley's 
"Wonders of the Little World." Besides, his 
father's library, wherein as a boy he was 
wont to browse constantly, contained the 
Of era Omnia of Paracelsus. 

With the confidence of youth and of genius 
the poet attempts in this poem a solution 
of the problem. To mind he gives the 
attribute of knowledge, to spirit the attribute 
of love. 

The poem as a whole does not concern us 
here except as a background for its final 
thoughts. In order, however, to put the 
situation clearly before readers not already 
familiar with it, I venture to transcribe a 
portion of a former analysis of my own. 

Paracelsus aspires to the acquisition of 
absolute knowledge and feels born within 
him the capabilities for attaining this end, 
and, when attained, it is to be devoted to 
enlarging the possibilities of man's life. The 
whole race is to be elevated at once. Man 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 15 

may not be doomed to cope with seraphs, 
yet by the exercise of iiuman strength alone 
he hopes man may one day beat God's angels. 
He is a revolter, however, against the 
magical and alchemistic methods of his age, 
which seek for the welfare of men through 
the elixir of youth or the philosopher's stone. 
He especially disclaims such puerile schemes 
in the passionate moment when he has 
realized how futile all his lifelong efforts have 
been. He stands, indeed, at the threshold 
of a new world. He has a glimmering of the 
true scientific methods which would discover 
first the secrets of Hfe's laws, and then use 
these natural laws to bring about life's 
betterment, instead of hoping for salvation 
through the discovery of some magic secret 
by means of which life's laws might be over- 
come. Yet he is sufficiently of his own super- 
stitious age to desire and expect fairly magical 
results from the laws he hopes to discover. 
The creed which spurs him to his quest is his 
belief that truth is inborn in the soul, but to 
set this truth free and make it of use to 
mankind correspondences in outer nature 
must be found. An intuitive mind like Para- 
celsus's will recognize these natural corol- 
laries of the intuition wherever it finds them; 
and these are what Paracelsus goes forth 



16 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

over the earth to seek and find, sure he 
will "arrive." One illustration of the results 
so obtained is seen in the doctrine of the 
signatures of plants according to which the 
flowers, leaves, and fruits of plants indicate 
by their color or markings, etc., the particu- 
lar diseases they are intended to cure. The 
real Paracelsus practised medicine upon this 
theory. 

Though such methods are a long distance 
from those of the modern scientist, who 
deduces his laws from careful and patient 
observation of nature, they go a step toward 
his in seeking laws in nature to correspond 
to hypotheses born of intuition. 

Browning's presentation of the attitude of 
mind and the place held by Paracelsus in the 
development of science is exactly in hne with 
the most recent criticisms of this extraordinary 
man's life. According to these he fluctuated 
between the systems of magic then prevalent 
and scientific observation, but always finally 
threw in the balance of his opinion on the 
side of scientific ways of working; and above 
all made the great step from a belief in the 
influence of nature upon man to that of the 
existence of parallelisms between nature proc- 
esses and human processes. 

Though he thus opened up new vistas for 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 17 

the benefit of man, he must necessarily be a 
failure, from his own point of view,' with his 
*' India" not found, his absolute truth unat- 
tained; and it is upon this side that the poet 
dwells. For a moment he is somewhat 
reassured by the apparition of Aprile, scarcely 
a creature of flesh and blood, more the spirit 
of art who aspires to love infinitely and has 
found the attainment of such love as impos- 
sible as Paracelsus has found the attainment 
of knowledge. Both have desired to help 
men, but Paracelsus has desired to help them 
rather through the perfecting, even immortal- 
izing, of their physical being; Aprile, through 
giving man, as he is, infinite sympathy and 
through creating forms of beauty which 
would show him his own thoughts and hopes 
glorified by the all-seeing touch of the artist. 
Paracelsus recognizes his deficient sym- 
pathy for mankind, and tries to make up for 
it in his own way by giving out of the fulness 
of his knowledge to men. The scornful and 
proud reformer has not, however, truly learned 
the lesson of love, and verily has his reward 
when he is turned against by those whom he 
would teach. Then the old ideal seizes upon 
tim again, and still under the influence of 
Aprile he seeks in human experience the 
loves and passions of mankind which he 



18 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

learns through Aprile he had neglected 
for the ever-illusive secret, but neither does 
success attend him here, and only on his death- 
bed does his vision clear up, and he is made to 
indulge in a prophetic utterance quite beyond 
the reach of the original Paracelsus. 

In this passage is to be found Browning's 
first contribution to a solution of the great 
problem. That it is instinct with the idea of 
evolution has become a commonplace of 
Browning criticism, a fact which was at least 
independently or, as far as I know, first 
pointed out by myself in an early essay 
upon Browning. At the time, I was reading 
both Browning and Spencer, and could not 
but be impressed by the parallelisms in 
thought between the two, especially those in 
this seer-like passage and '*The Data of 
Ethics." 

Writers whose appreciation of a poet is in 
direct ratio to the number of exact historical 
facts to be found in a poem like to emphasize 
this fact that the doctrine of evolution can 
be found in the works of Paracelsus. Why 
not.f^ Since, as we have seen it had been 
floating about in philosophical thought in one 
form or another for some thousands of years. 

Indeed, it has been stated upon good 
authority that the idea of a gradual evolution 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT . 19 

according to law and of a God from whom 
all being emanates, from whom all power 
proceeds, is an inherent necessity of the Aryan 
mind as opposed to the Semitic idea of an 
outdwelling God and of supernaturalism. 
Thus, all down the ages the Aryan mind 
has revolted from time to time against the 
religious ideas superimposed upon it by the 
Semitic mind. This accounts for the numer- 
ous heresies within the bosom of the Church 
as well as for the scientific advance against 
the superstitions of the Church. 

Generalizations of this sweeping order are 
apt to contain only partial truth. It would 
probably be nearer the whole truth, as we 
are enabled to-day to trace historical devel- 
opment, to say that, starting with opposite 
conceptions, these two orders of mind have 
worked toward each other and the harmoniza- 
tion of their respective points of view, and, 
furthermore, that this difference in mind 
belongs to a period prior even to the emer- 
gence of the Aryan or the Semitic. Re- 
searches in mythology and folklore seem to 
indicate that no matter how far back one 
may go in the records of human thought 
there will be found these two orders of mind — 
one which naturally thinks of the universe as 
the outcome of law, and one which naturally 



20 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

thinks of it as the outcome of creation. There 
are primitive myths in which mankind is 
supposed to be descended from a primitive 
ancestor, which may range all the way from 
a serpent to an oak tree, or, as in a certain 
Zulu myth, a bed of reeds growing on the 
back of a small animal. And there are equally 
primitive myths in which mankind is created 
out of the trees or the earth by an external 
agent, varying in importance from a grass- 
hopper to a more or less spiritual being. 

Browning did not need to depend upon 
Paracelsus for his knowledge of evolution. 
He may not have known that the ancient 
Hindu in the dim mists of the past had an 
intuition of the cosmic egg from which all 
life had evolved, and that he did not know 
of the theory as it is developed in the great 
German philosophers we are certain, because 
he, himself, asseverated that he had never 
read the German philosophers, but it is hardly 
possible that he did not know something of 
it as it appears in the writings of the Greek 
philosophers, for Greek literature was among 
the earliest of his studies. He might, for 
instance, have taken a hint from the specula- 
tions of that half mythical marvel of a man, 
Empedocles, with which the Paracelsus theory 
of the universe, as it appears in the passage 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 21 

under discussion, has many points of con- 
tact. 

According to Empedocles, the four primal 
elements, earth, air, fire and water, are 
worked upon by the forces of love and dis- 
cord. By means of these forces, out of the 
primal elements are evolved various and 
horrible monstrosities before the final form of 
perfection is reached. It is true he did not 
correctly imagine the stages in the processes 
of evolution, for instead of a gradual develop- 
ment of one form from another, he describes 
the process as a haphazard and chaotic one. 
"Many heads sprouted up without necks, 
and naked arms went wandering forlorn of 
shoulders, and solitary eyes were straying 
destitute of foreheads." These detached 
portions of bodies coming together by hap- 
hazard produced the earlier monstrous forms. 
*'Many came forth with double faces and two 
breasts, some shaped hke oxen with a human 
front, others, again, of human race with a 
bull's head." However, the latter part of the 
evolutionary process as described by Empe- 
docles, when Love takes command, seems 
especially pertinent as a possible source of 
Browning's thought: 

"When strife has reached the very bottom of the seething 
mass, and love assumes her station in the center of the ball, 



22 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

then everything begins to come together, and to form one 
whole — not instantaneously, but different substances come 
forth, according to a steady process of development. Now, 
when these elements are mingling, countless kinds of things 
issue from their union. Much, however, remains unmixed, in 
opposition to the mingling elements, and these, malignant 
strife still holds within his grasp. For he has not yet with- 
drawn himself altogether to the extremities of the globe; but 
part of his Hmbs still remain within its bounds, and part have 
passed beyond. As strife, however, step by step retreats, 
mild and innocent love pursues him with her force divine; 
things which had been immortal instantly assume mortality; 
the simple elements become confused by interchange of 
influences. When these are mingled, then the countless kinds 
of mortal beings issue forth, furnished with every sort of 
form — a sight of wonder. '* 

Though evolution was no new idea, it had 
been only a hypothesis arrived at intuitionally 
or suggested by crude observations of nature 
until by perfected methods of historical study 
and of scientific experimentation proof was 
furnished of its truth as a scientific verity. 

Let us glance at the situation at the time 
when Paracelsus was published. In 1835 
science had made great strides in the direction 
of proving the correctness of the hypothesis. 
Laplace had lived and died and had given 
to the world in mathematical reasoning of 
remarkable power proof of the nebular hy- 
pothesis, which was later to be verified by 
Fraunhofer's discoveries in spectrum analysis. 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 23 

Lamarck had lived and died and had given 
to the world his theory of animal evolution. 
Lyall in England had shown that geological 
formations were evolutionary rather than 
cataclysmal. In fact, greater and lesser scien- 
tific lights in England and on the continent 
were every day adding fresh facts to the 
burden of proof in favor of the hypothesis. 
It was in the air, and denunciations of it 
were in the air. 

Most interesting of all, however, in con- 
nection with our present theme is the fact 
that Herbert Spencer was still a lad of fifteen, 
who was independently of Darwin to work 
out a complete philosophy of evolution, 
which was to be applied in every department 
of cosmic, geologic, plant, animal and human 
activity, but (and this is of special interest) 
he was not to give to the world his plan for 
a synthetic philosophy until 1860, and not 
to pubhsh his "First Principles" until 1862, 
nor the first instalment of the "Data of 
Ethics," the fruit of his whole system, until 
1879. 

Besides being familiar with the idea as it 
crops out in Greek thought, it is impossible 
that the young Browning was not cognizant 
of the scientific attitude of the time. In 
fact, he tells us as much himself, for when 



24 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Doctor Wonivall asked him some questions 
as to his attitude toward Darwin, Browning 
responded in a letter: "In reaUty all that 
seems proved in Darwin's scheme was a 
conception familiar to me from the beginning." 

Entirely familiar with the evolutionary 
idea, then, however he may have derived it, 
it is just what might be expected that he 
should have worked it into Paracelsus's final 
theory of life. The remarkable thing is that 
he should have applied its principles in so 
masterly a fashion — namely, that he should 
have made a complete philosophical synthesis 
by bringing the idea of evolution to bear 
upon all natural, human and spiritual proc- 
esses of growth twenty-five years before 
Herbert Spencer, who is regarded on this 
particular ground as the master mind of 
the century, gave his synthetic philosophy of 
evolution to the world. 

A momentary glance at the passage in 
question will make this clear. Paracelsus 
traces first development as illustrated in 
geological forms: 

"The center-fire heaves underneath the earth. 
And the earth changes like a human face; 
The molten one bursts up among the rocks, 
Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright 
In hidden mines, spots barren river beds. 
Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask. " 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 25 

Next he touches upon plant hfe and 
animal life. The grass grows bright, the 
boughs are swollen with blooms, ants make 
their ado, birds fly in merry flocks, the 
strand is purple with its tribe of nested 
limpets, savage creatures seek their loves in 
wood and plain. Then he shows how in all 
this animal life are scattered attributes fore- 
shadowing a being that will combine them. 
Then appears primitive man, only half en- 
lightened, who gains knowledge through the 
slow, uncertain fruit of toil, whose love is not 
serenely pure, but strong from weakness, a 
love which endures and doubts and is op- 
pressed. And out of the travail of the 
human soul as it proceeds from lower to higher 
forms is finally evolved seK-conscious man — 
man who consciously looks back upon all 
that has preceded him and interprets nature 
by means of his own human perceptions. 
The winds are henceforth voices, wailing or 
a shout, a querulous mutter or a quick, gay 
laugh, never a senseless gust, now man is 
born. 

But development does not end with the 
attainment of this self -consciousness. After 
this stage has been reached there continues 
an evolution which is distinctively spiritual, a 
tendency to God. Browning was not content 



26 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

with the evolution of man, he was prophetic 
of the final flowering of man in the superman, 
although he had never heard of Nietszche. 

The corollary to this progressive theory 
of life, a view held by scientific thinkers, is 
that sin is not depravity, but is merely a 
lack of development. Paracelsus is therefore 
made wise to know even hate is but a mask of 
love, to see a good in evil, a hope in ill-success, 
to sympathize, even be proud of man's half- 
reasons, faint aspirings, dim struggles for 
truth — all with a touch of nobleness despite 
their error, upward tending all, though weak. 

Though there are points of contact be- 
tween the thought of the true Paracelsus and 
of Browning, the points of contact between 
Spencer and Browning are far more significant, 
for Browning seems intuitively to have per- 
ceived the fundamental truths of social and 
psychic evolution at the early age of twenty- 
three — truths which the philosopher worked 
out only after years of laborious study. 

We, who, to-day, are familiar with the 
application of the theory of evolution to every 
object from a dustpan to a flying machine, 
can hardly throw ourselves into the atmos- 
phere of the first half of the last century 
when this dynamic ideal was flung into a 
world with static ideals. The Christian world 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 27 

knew little and cared less about the guesses 
of Greek philosophers, whom they regarded 
when they did know about them as unre- 
generate pagans. German thought was cavi- 
are to the general, and what new thought of a 
historical or scientific nature made its way 
into the strongholds of conservatism filled 
people with suspicion and dread. Such a 
sweeping synthesis, therefore, as Browning 
gives of dawning scientific theories in Para- 
celsus was truly phenomenal. That it did 
not prove a bone of contention and arouse 
controversies as hot as those which were 
waged later around such scientific leaders as 
Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and CliflFord was 
probably due to the circumstance that the 
poem was little read and less understood, 
and also to the fact that it contained other 
elements which overlaid the bare presentation 
of the doctrines of evolution. 

So far I have spoken only of the form of the 
Paracelsus theory of life, but a theory of life 
to be complete must have soul as well as 
form. Only in adding the soul side to his 
theory of life does Browning really give his 
solution of the problem, what is to be the 
relation of mind and spirit.^ 

One other point of resemblance is to be 
noted between the thought of Browning's 



28 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Paracelsus and Herbert Spencer. They agree 
that ultimate knowledge is beyond the grasp 
of the intellect. Neither was this a new 
idea; but up to the time of Spencer it was 
taken simply as a negative conclusion. Spen- 
cer, however, having found this negation 
makes it the body of his philosophy — a body 
so shadowy that many of his critics consider 
it too ghostly to stand as a substantial basis 
for philosophical thought. He regards the 
failure of the intellect to picture the nature 
of the absolute as the most certain proof that 
our intuitions of its existence are trustworthy, 
and upon this he bases all religious aspiration. 
Like the psalmist, he exclaims, "Who by 
searching can find out God?" 

The attitude of Paracelsus is identical as 
far as the intellect is concerned. His life, 
spent in the search for knowledge, had proved 
it to him. But he does not, like Spencer, 
make it the body of his philosophy. Through 
the influence of Aprile he is led to a definite 
conception of the Infinite as a Being whose 
especial characteristic is that he feels ! — feels 
unbounded joy in his own creations. This 
is eminently an artist's or poet's perception 
of the relation of God to his universe. As 
Aprile in one place says, "God is the perfect 
poet, who in his person acts his own creations." 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 29 

As I have already pointed out, the evil of 
pain, of decay, of degeneration is taken no 
account of. 

There is the constant passing onward 
from joy to joy. All the processes of nature 
from the simplest to the most complex bring, 
in their turn, a dehght to their Creator until 
man appears, and is not only a joy to his 
Creator, but is the first in the order of creation 
to share in the joy of existence, the first to 
arrive at the full consciousness of beauty. 
So overwhelming is this consciousness of 
beauty that man perceives it struggling for 
expression in the hates and fallacies of unde- 
veloped natures. 

All this is characteristic of the artistic way 
of looking at life. The artist is prone either 
to ignore the ugly or to transmute it by art 
into something possessing beauty of power 
if not of loveliness. What are plays like 
"Hamlet" and "Macbeth," "Brand" and 
"Peer Gynt," music like "Tristan and Isolde" 
or the "Pathetic Symphony," Rodin's statues, 
but actual, palpable realizations of the fact 
that hate is but a mask of love, or that human 
fallacies and human passions have within 
them the seeds of immense beauty if only 
there appear the artist who can bring them 
forth. If this is true of the human artist. 



30 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

how much more is it true of the divine artist 
in whose shadow, as Pompiha says, even a 
Guido may find heaUng. 

The optimism of such a theory of existence 
is intoxicating. Not only does this artist- 
man look backward and rejoice in all the 
beauty of past phases of creation, but he 
looks forward to endless progression in the 
enjoyment of fresh phases of beauty — "a 
flying point of bliss remote." This is a 
universe in which the Prometheus of the 
old myths is indeed unbound. Mankind is 
literally free to progress forever upward. If 
there are some men in darkness, they are like 
plants in mines struggling to break out into 
the sunlight they see beyond. 

The interesting question arises here, was 
Browning, himself, entirely responsible for 
the soul of his Paracelsus theory of life or 
was there some source beyond him from 
which he drew inspiration .^^ 

It has frequently been suggested that 
Aprile in this poem is a sort of symbolic 
representation of Shelley. Why not rather 
a composite of both Shelley and Keats, the 
poet of love and the poet of beauty.'^ An 
examination of the greatest poems of these two 
writers, "Prometheus Unbound" and "Hy- 
perion, " will bring out the elements in both 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 31 

which I beHeve entered into Browning's con- 
ception. 

In the exalted symboHsm of the "Pro- 
metheus Unbound" Shelley shows that, in 
his view, evil and suffering were not inherent 
in the nature of things, the tyranny of evil 
having gained its ascendancy through the 
persistence of out-worn ideals, such as that of 
Power or Force symbolized in the Greek idea 
of Jupiter. Prometheus is the revolting mind 
of mankind, enslaved by the tyranny of 
Jupiter, hating the tyrant, yet determined 
to endure all the tyrant can inflict upon him 
rather than admit his right to rule. The 
freeing of Prometheus and the dethrone- 
ment of Jupiter come through the awak- 
ening in the heart of Prometheus of pity 
for the tyrant — that is, Prometheus has 
learned to love his enemies as he loves 
his friends. The remainder of the poem is 
occupied with showing the effects upon 
humanity of this universal awakening of 
love. 

In the fine passage where the Spirit of 
the Earth hears the trumpet of the Spirit of 
the Hour sound in a great city, it beholds 
all ugly human shapes and visages which had 
caused it pain pass floating through the air, 
and fading still 



32 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

**Into the winds that scattered them, and those 
From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms 
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all 
Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise 
And greetings of delighted wonder, all 
Went to their sleep again. " 

And the Spirit of the Hour relates: 

"Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled 
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth. 
There was a change: the impalpable thin air 
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed 
As if the sense of love dissolved in them 
Had folded itself around the sphered world." 

In the meantime, the over-souls of human- 
ity — Prometheus, symbolic of thought or 
knowledge, is reunited to Asia, his spouse, 
symbolic of Nature or emotion, from whom 
he has long been separated and together with 
Asia's sisters, Panthea and lone — retire 
to the wonderful cave where they are hence- 
forth to dwell and where their occupations 
are inspired by the most childlike and exalted 
moods of the soul. 

Before considering the bearing of their life 
of love and art in the cave upon the character 
of Aprile let us turn our attention for a 
moment to a remarkable passage in "Hype- 
rion," which poem was written as far back 
as 1820. Keats, Uke Shelley, deals with the 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 33 

dethronement of gods, but it is the older 
dynasty of Titans — Saturn and Hyperion 
usurped by Jupiter and Apollo. Shelley's 
thought in the "Prometheus" is strongly 
influenced by Christian ideals, but Keats's 
is thoroughly Greek. 

The passing of one series of gods and the 
coming into power of another series of gods 
was a familiar idea in Greek mythology. It 
reflected at once the literal fact that ever 
higher and higher forces of nature had been 
deified by them, beginning with crude Nature 
gods and ending with symbols of the most 
ideal human attributes, and at the same time 
that their thought leaned in the direction of 
interpreting nature as an evolutionary proc- 
ess. Seizing upon this, Keats has presented 
in the words of the old Titan Oceanus a 
theory of the evolution of beauty quite as 
startling as a prophecy of psychological 
theories upon this subject as Browning's is 
of cosmic and social theories. Addressing 
Saturn, Oceanus says: 

We fall by course of Nature's law, not force 
Of thunder, or of love. . . . 

. . . As thou wast not the first of powers 
So art thou not the last; it cannot be: 
From chaos and parental darkness came 
Light, the first fruits of that intestine broil. 



34 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

That sullen ferment, which for wondrous ends 
Was ripening in itself. The ripe hour came 
And with it hght, and light, engendering 
Upon its own producer, forthwith touched. 
The whole enormous matter into life. 
Upon that very hour, our parentage 
The Heavens and the Earth were manifest; 
Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race, 
Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms 



As Heaven and Earth are fairer far 

Than chaos and blank darkness, though once chiefs. 

And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth 

In form and shai>e compact and beautiful. 

In will, in action free, companionship 

And thousand other signs of purer life, 

So on our heels a fresh perfection treads, 

A power more strong in beauty, born of us 

And fated to excel us, as we pass 

In glory that old darkness : nor are we 

Thereby more conquered than by us the rule 

Of shapeless chaos. For 'tis the eternal law 

That first in beauty should be first in might. 

Yea, by that law, another race may drive 

Our conquerors to mourn as we do now. '* 

There is in the attitude of Oceanus a 
magnificent acceptance of this ruthless course 
of nature reminding one of that taken by such 
men as Huxley and Clifford in the face of 
their own scientific discoveries, but one is 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 35 

immediately struck by the absence of love 
in the idea. An Apollo, no matter what 
new beauty he may have, himself, to offer, 
who yet disregards the beauty of Hyperion 
and calmly accepts the throne of the sun 
in his stead, does not satisfy us. What 
unreason it is that so splendid a being as 
Hyperion should be deposed! As a matter 
of fact, he was not deposed. He is left 
standing forever in our memories in splendor 
like the morn, for Keats did not finish the 
poem and no picture of the enthroned Apollo 
is given. Perhaps Keats remembered his 
earlier utterance, "A thing of beauty is a 
joy forever," and cared for his own Hyperion 
too much to banish him for the sake of 
Apollo. 

Be that as it may, the points in relation to 
our subject are that Shelley's emphasis 
is upon the conservation of beauty, while 
Keats's emphasis is upon the evolution of 
new beauty. 

In the cave where Prometheus and Asia 
dwell — the cave of universal spirit — is given 
forth the inspiration to humanity for painting, 
poetry and arts, yet to be born, and all these 
arts return to delight them, fashioned into 
form by human artists. Love is the ruling 
principle. Therefore all forms of beautiful 



36 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

art are immortal. Aprile,* as he first appears, 
is an elaboration upon this idea. He would 
love all humanity with such intensity that he 
would immortahze in all forms of art — paint- 
ing, poetry, music — every thought and emo- 
tion of which the hmnan soul is capable, and 
this done he would say: 

"His spirits created — 
God grants to each a sphere to be its world, 
AppK)inted with the various objects needed 
To satisfy its own peculiar want; 
So, I create a world for these my shapes 
Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength. '* 

In short, he would found a universal art 
museum exactly like the cave in which Pro- 
metheus dwelt. The stress is no more than 
it is in Shelley upon a search for new beauty, 
and there is not a hint that a coming beauty 
shall blot out the old until Aprile recognizes 
Paracelsus as his king. Then he awakes to 
the fact that his own ideal has been partial, 



*The influence of the "Prometheus Unbound" upon the con- 
ception of Aprile's character was first brought forward by the writer 
in a paper read before the Boston Browning Society, March 15, 
1910, a typewritten copy of which was placed in the Browning alcove 
in the Boston Pubhc Library. In the "Life of Browning," published 
the same year and not read by the writer until recently, Mr. Hall 
Griffin touches upon the same thought in the following words: 
"From some elements in the myth of Prometheus Browning unmis- 
takably evolved the conception of his Aprile as not only the lover and 
the poet but as the potential sculptor, painter, orator, and musician." 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 37 

because he has not been a seeker after knowl- 
edge, or new beauty, and in much the same 
spirit as Oceanus, he exclaims: 

"Lo, I forget my ruin, and rejoice 
In tby success, as thou ! Let our God's praise 
Go bravely through the world at last! What care 
Through me or thee?" 

But Paracelsus had learned a lesson through 
Aprile which the Apollo of Keats had not 
learned. He does not accept kingship at the 
expense of Aprile as Apollo would do at the 
expense of Hyperion. He includes in his 
final theory of life all that is beautiful in 
Aprile's or Shelley's ideal and adds to it all 
that is beautiful of the Keats ideal. The form 
of his philosophy is evolutionary, and up to the 
time of his meeting with Aprile had expressed 
itself as the search for knowledge. Through 
Aprile his philosophy becomes imbued with 
soul, the attributes of which are the spirit of 
love and the spirit of beauty, one of which 
conserves and immortahzes beauty, the other 
of which searches out new beauty. 

So, working hand in hand, they become one, 
while the search for knowledge, thus spiritual- 
ized, becomes the search for beauty always 
inspired by love. The aim of the evolutionary 
process thus becomes the unfolding of ever 



38 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

new phases of beauty in which God takes 
endless dehght, and to the final enjoyment of 
which mankind shall attain. 

To sum up, Browning's solution of the 
problem in the Paracelsus theory of life is 
reached not only through a synthesis of the 
doctrines of evolution as applied to universal 
activities, cosmic and human, prophetic, on 
the one hand, of the most advanced scientific 
thought of the century, but it is a synthesis 
of these and of the art-spirit in its twofold 
aspect of love and beauty as already expressed 
in the poetry of Shelley and Keats. 

It is not in the least probable that Brown- 
ing set to work consciously to piece together 
these ideals. That is not the method of the 
artist! But being familiar to him in the two 
best beloved poets of his youth, they had 
sunk into his very being, and welled forth 
from his own subconsciousness, charged with 
personal emotion, partly dramatic, partly the 
expression of his own true feeling at the time, 
and the result be it said is one of the most 
inspiring and beautiful passages in English 
poetry. 

At the end of his life and the end of the 
century Herbert Spencer, who had spent 
years of labor to prove the fallacies in all 
religious dogmas, and who had insisted upon 




Paracelsus 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 39 

religion's being entirely relegated to intellectu- 
ally unknowable regions of thought, spoke in 
his autobiography of the mysteries inherent 
in life, in the evolution of human beings, in 
consciousness, in human destiny — mysteries 
that the very advance of science makes more 
and more evident, exhibits as more and more 
profound and impenetrable, adding: 

"Thus religious creeds, which in one way or other occupy 
the sphere that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and 
fails, and fails the more, the more it seeks, I have come to 
regard with a sympathy based on community of need: feeling 
that dissent from them results from inability to accept the 
solutions oflFered, joined with the wish that solutions could 
be found." 

Loyal to the last to his determination to 
accept as knowledge only what the intellect 
could prove, he never permitted himself to 
come under the awakening influence of an 
Aprile, yet like Browning's ancient Greek, 
Cleon, he longed for a solution of the mystery. 

At the dawn of the century, and in his 
youth. Browning ventured upon a solution. 
In the remainder of this and the next chapter 
I shall attempt to show what elements in 
this solution the poet retained to the end of 
his life, how his thought became modified, 
and what relation his final solution bears to 
the final thought of the century. 



40 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

In this first attempt at a synthesis of life 
in which the attributes pecuHar to the mind 
and to the spirit are brought into harmonious 
relationship, Browning is more the intuition- 
alist than the scientist. His convictions well 
forth with all the force of an inborn revelation, 
just as kindred though much less rational 
views of nature's processes sprang up in the 
mind of the ancient Hindu or the ancient 
Greek. 

The philosophy of life herein flashed out 
by the poet was later to be elaborated fully 
on its objective or observational side by 
Spencer — the philosopher par excellence of 
evolution — and finally, also, of course, on 
the objective side, to become an assured fact 
of science through the publication in 1859 
of Darwin's epoch-making book, *'The Origin 
of Species," wherein the laws, so disturbing 
to many at the time, of natural selection and 
the survival of the fittest were fully set forth. 

While the genetic view of nature, as the 
phraseology of to-day goes, had been antici- 
pated in writers on cosmology like Leibnitz 
and Laplace, in geology by such men as 
Hutton and Lyall, and had entered into the 
domain of embryology through the researches 
of Von Baer, and while Spencer had already 
formulated a philosophy of evolution, Darwin 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 41 

went out into the open and studied the actual 
facts in the domain of Hving beings. His 
studies made evolution a certainty. They 
revealed the means by which its processes 
were accomplished, and in so doing pointed 
to an origin of man entirely opposed to ortho- 
dox views upon this subject. Thus was in- 
augurated the last great phase in the struggle 
between mind and spirit. 

Henceforth, science stood completely re- 
vealed as the unflinching searcher of truth. 
Intuition was but a handmaid whose duty 
was to formulate working hypotheses, to 
become scientific law if provable by investi- 
gation or experiment, to be discarded if 
not. 

The aspects which this battle has assumed 
in the latter half of the century have been 
many and various. Older sciences with a 
new lease of life and sciences entirely new 
have advanced along the path pointed out 
by the doctrines of evolution. Battalions of 
determined men have held aloft the banner of 
uncompromising truth. Each battalion has 
stormed truth's citadel only to find that 
about its inmost reahty is an impregnable 
wall. The utmost which has been attained 
in any case is a working hypothesis, useful 
in bringing to light many new objective phe- 



42 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

nomena, it is true, but, in the end, serving 
only to deepen the mystery inherent in the 
nature of all things. 

Such a working hypothesis was the earlier 
one of gravitation whose laws of action 
were elaborated by Sir Isaac Newton, and 
by the great mind of Laplace were still 
further developed with marvelous math- 
ematical precision in his "Mechanique Cel- 
este." 

Such another hypothesis is that of the 
atomic theory of the constitution of matter 
usually associated with the name of Dalton, 
though it has undergone many modifications 
from other scientific thinkers. Of this hy- 
pothesis Theodore Merz writes in his history 
of nineteenth-century scientific thought: 

"As to the nature of the diflFerences of the elements, the 
atomic view gives no information; it simply asserts these 
differences, assumes them as physical constants, and tries 
to describe them by number and measurement. The 
atomic view is therefore at best only a provisional basis, a 
convenient resting place, similar to that which Newton found 
in physical astronomy, and on which has been estabUshed 
the astronomical view of nature. '* 

The vibratory theories of the ether, the 
theories of the conservation of energy, the 
vitalistic view of life, the theory of parallel- 
ism of physical and psychical phenomena are 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 43 

all such hypotheses. They have been of incal- 
culable value in helping to a larger knowledge 
of the appearances of things, and in the 
formation of laws of action and reaction, but 
in no way have they aided in revealing the 
inner or transcendent realities of the myriad 
manifestations of nature and life! 

During the last half of the century this 
truth has forced itself with ever increasing 
power upon the minds of scientists, and has 
resulted in many divisions among the ranks. 
Some rest upon phenomena as the final 
reality; hence materialistic or mechanical 
views of life. Some believe that the only 
genuine reality is the one undiscoverable by 
science; hence new presentations of meta- 
physical views of life. 

During these decades the solid phalanx of 
religious believers has continued to watch 
from its heights with more or less of fear the 
advance of science. Here, too, there has been 
division in the ranks. Many denounced the 
scientists as the destroyers of religion; others 
like the good Bishop Colenso could write 
such words as these in 1873: "Bless God 
devoutly for the gift of modern science"; and 
who ten years earlier had expressed satisfac- 
tion in the fact that superstitious belief in 
the letter of the Bible was giving way to a 



44 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

true appreciation of the real value of the 
ancient Hebrew Scriptures as containing the 
dawn of religious light. 

From another quarter came the critical 
students of the Bible, who subjected its con- 
tents to the keen tests of historical and 
archaeological study. Serene, above all the 
turmoil, was the small band of genuine phil- 
osophers who, like Browning's own musician, 
Abt Vogler, knew the very truth. No matter 
what disturbing facts may be brought to 
light by science, be it man's descent from 
Anthropoids or a mechanical view of sensa- 
tion, they continue to dwell unshaken in the 
light of a transcendent truth which reaches 
them through some other avenue than that 
of the mind. 

Browning belonged by nature in this last 
group. Already in "Sordello" his attention 
is turned to the development of the soul, and 
from that time on to the end of his career he 
is the champion of the soul-side of existence 
with all that it implies of character develop- 
ment — "little else being worth study," as 
he declared in his introduction to a second 
edition of the poem written twenty years 
after its first appearance. 

On this rock, the human soul, he takes 
his stand, and, though all the complex waves 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 45 

of the tempest of nineteenth-century thought 
break against his feet, he remains firm. 

Beginning with '*Sordello," it is no longer 
evolution as applied to every aspect of the 
universe but evolution as applied to the 
human spirit which has his chief interest. 
Problems growing out of the marvelous de- 
velopments of such sciences as astronomy, 
geology, physics, chemistry or biology do 
not enter into the main body of the poet's 
thought, though there are allusions many and 
exact which show his famiharity with the 
growth of these various objective sciences 
during his life. 

During all the middle years of his poetic 
career the relations of the mind and the 
spirit seemed to fascinate Browning, espe- 
cially upon the side of the problems connected 
with the supernatural bases of religious 
experience. These are the problems which 
grew out of that phase of scholarly advance 
represented by biblical criticism. 

Such a poem as "Saul," for example, 
though full of a humanity and tenderness, as 
well as of a sheer poetic beauty, which endear 
it alike to those who appreciate little more 
than the content of the poem, and to those 
whose appreciation is that of the connoisseur 
in poetic art, is nevertheless an interpretation 



46 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of the origin of prophecy, especially of the 
Messianic idea, which places Browning in 
the van of the thought of the century on ques- 
tions connected with biblical criticism. 

At the time when "Saul" was written, 1845, 
modern biblical criticism had certainly gained 
very little hearing in England, for even as late 
as 1862 Bishop Colenso's enlightened book 
on the Pentateuch was received, as one writer 
expresses it, with "almost unanimous disap- 
probation and widespread horror." 

Critics of the Bible there had been since 
the seventeenth century, but they had pro- 
duced a confused mass of stuff in their attacks 
upon the authenticity of the Bible against 
which the orthodox apologists had succeeded 
in holding their own. At the end of the 
eighteenth and the dawn of the nineteenth 
century came the more systematic criticism 
of German scholars, echoes of whose theories 
found their way into England through the 
studies of such men as Pusey. But these, 
though they gave full consideration to the 
foremost of the German critics of the day, 
ranged themselves, for the most part, on the 
side of orthodoxy. 

Eichhorn, one of the first of the Germans 
to be studied in England, had found a point 
of departure in the celebrated " Wolf enblittel 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 47 

Fragments," which had been printed by 
Lessing from manuscripts by an unknown 
writer Reimarus discovered in the WoKen- 
buttel hbrary. These fragments represent 
criticism of the sweepingly destructive order, 
characteristic of what has been called the nat- 
uralistic school. Although Eichhorn agreed 
with the writer of the "Fragments" that the 
biblical narratives should be divested of all 
their supernatural aspects, he did not inter- 
pret the supernatural elements as simply 
frauds designed to deceive in order that 
personal ends might be gained. He restored 
dignity to the narrative by insisting at once 
upon its historical verity and upon a natural 
interpretation of the supernatural — *'a spon- 
taneous illumination reflected from antiquity 
itseK," which might result from primitive mis- 
understanding of natural phenomena, from 
the poetical embellishment of facts, or the 
symbolizing of an idea. 

Doctor Paulus, in his commentary on the 
Gospels (1800), carried the idea still farther, 
and the rationalistic school of Bible criticism 
became an assured fact, though Kant at this 
time developed an entirely different theory 
of Bible interpretation, which in a sense 
harked back to the older allegorical interpre- 
tation of the Bible. 



48 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

He did not trouble himseK at all about the 
historical accuracy of the narratives. He was 
concerned only in discovering the idea under- 
lying the stories, the moral gist of them in 
relation to human development. With the 
naturahsts and the rationalists, he put aside 
any idea of Divine revelation. It was the 
moral aspiration of the authors, themselves, 
which threw a supernatural glamour over their 
accounts of old traditions and turned them 
into symbols of life instead of merely records 
of bona fide facts of history. The weakness 
of Kant's standpoint was later pointed out 
by Strauss, whose opinion is well summed up 
in the following paragraph. 

"Whilst Kant sought to educe moral 
thoughts from the biblical writings, even in 
their historical part, and was even inchned to 
consider these thoughts as the fundamental 
object of the history: on the other hand he 
derived these thoughts only from himself 
and the cultivation of his age, and therefore 
could seldom assume that they had actually 
been laid down by the authors of these writ- 
ings; and on the other hand, and for the same 
reason, he omitted to show what was the rela- 
tion between these thoughts and those sym- 
bolic representations, and how it happened that 
the one came to be expressed by the other." 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 49 

The next development of biblical criticism 
was the mythical mode of interpretation in 
which are prominent the names of Gabler, 
Schelling, Bauer, Vater, De Wette, and others. 
These critics among them set themselves the 
diflScult task of classifying the Bible narra- 
tives under the heads of three kinds of myths : 
historical myths, philosophical myths, and 
poetical myths. The first were "narratives 
of real events colored by the light of antiquity, 
which confounded the divine and the human, 
the natural and the supernatural"; the sec- 
ond, "such as clothe in the garb of historical 
narrative a simple thought, a precept, or an 
idea of the time"; the third, "historical and 
philosophical myths partly blended together 
and partly embellished by the creations of 
the imagination, in which the original fact or 
idea is almost obscured by the veil which the 
fancy of the poet has woven around it." 

This sort of interpretation, first applied to 
the Old Testament, was later used in sifting 
history from myth to the New Testament. 

It will be seen that it has something in 
common with both the previously opposed 
views. The mythical interpretation agrees 
with the old allegorical view in so far that 
they both relinquish historical reality in favor 
of some inherent truth or religious conception 



50 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of which the historical semblance is merely 
the shell. On the other hand it agrees with 
the rationalistic view in the fact that it really 
gives a natural explanation of the process of 
the grow^th of myths and legends in human 
society. Immediate divine agency controls in 
the allegorical view, the spirit of individuals 
or of society controls in the mythical view. 

Neither the out-and-out rationalists nor 
the orthodox students of the Bible approved 
of this new mode of interpretation, which 
was more or less the outcome of the study of 
the sacred books of other religions. In 1835, 
however, appeared an epoch-making book 
which subjected the New Testament to the 
most elaborate criticism based upon mythical 
and legendary interpretation. This was the 
"Life of Jesus, Critically Examined," by Dr. 
David Friedrich Strauss. This book caused 
a great stir in the theological world of Ger- 
many. Strauss was dismissed from his pro- 
fessorship in the University of Tubingen in 
consequence of it. Not only this, but in 
1839, when he was appointed professor of 
Church History and Divinity at the University 
of Zurich, he was compelled at once to resign, 
and the administration which appointed him 
was overthrown. This veritable bomb thrown 
into the world of theology was translated by 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 51 

George Eliot, and published in England in 
1846. 

Through this translation the most advanced 
German thought must have become familiar 
to many outside the pale of the professional 
scholar, and among them was, doubtless, 
the 'poet Browning, if indeed he had not 
already become familiar with it in the original. 
When the content and the thought of 
Browning's poems upon rehgious subjects are 
examined, it becomes certain that he was 
familiar with the whole trend of biblical 
criticism in the first half of the century and 
of its effect upon certain of the orthodox 
churchmen, and that with full consciousness 
he brought forward in his religious poems, 
not didactically, but often by the subtlest 
indirections, his own attitude toward the 
problems raised in this department of scien- 
tific historical inquiry. 

Some of the problems which occupied his 
attention, such as that in "The Death in the 
Desert, " are directly traceable to the influence 
of Strauss's book. Whether he knew of 
Strauss's argument or not when he wrote 
"Saul," his treatment of the story of David 
and Saul is not only entirely in sympathy 
with the creed of the German school of 
mythical interpreters, but the poet himself 



52 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

becomes one of the myth makers in the series 
of prophets — that is, he takes the idea, the 
Messianic idea, poetically embellishes an old 
tradition, making it glow with humanness, 
throws into that idea not only a content 
beyond that which David could have dreamed 
of, but suggests a purely psychical origin of 
the Messianic idea itself in keeping with his 
own thought on the subject. 

The history of the origin and growth of 
the Messianic ideal as traced by the most 
modern Jewish critics claims it to have been 
a slow evolution in the minds of the prophets. 
In Genesis it appears as the prophecy of a 
time to come of universal happiness promised 
to Abraham, through whose seed all the 
peoples of the earth shall be blessed, because 
they had hearkened unto the voice of God. 
From a family ideal in Abraham it passed on 
to being a tribal ideal with Jacob, and with 
the prophets it became a national ideal, an 
aspiration toward individual happiness and 
a noble national hfe. Not until the time of 
Isaiah is a special agent mentioned who is to 
be the instrument by means of which the 
blessing is to be fulfilled, and there we read 
this prophecy: "There shall sprout forth a 
shoot from the stem of Jesse, upon whom will 
rest the spirit of Yahveh, the spirit of wisdom 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 53 

and understanding, of counsel and strength, 
of the knowledge and fear of God. He will 
not judge according to appearance, nor will 
he according to hearsay. He will govern in 
righteousness the poor, and judge with equity 
the humble of the earth. He will smite the 
mighty with the rod of his mouth, and the 
wicked with the breath of his lips." 

The ideal expressed here of a great and wise 
national ruler who would bring about the 
realization of liberty, justice and peace to 
the Hebrew nation, and not only to them but 
to all mankind, becomes in the prophetic 
vision of Daniel a mystic being. "I saw in 
the visions of night, and behold, with the 
clouds of heaven came down as a hkeness of 
the son of man. He stepped forward to the 
ancient of days. To him was given dominion, 
magnificence and rule. And all the peoples, 
nations and tongues did homage to him. 
His empire is an eternal empire and his realm 
shall never cease." 

In "Saul" Browning makes David the type 
of the prophetic faculty in its complete 
development. His vision is of an ideal which 
was not fully unfolded until the advent of 
Jesus himself — the ideal not merely of the 
mythical political liberator but of the spiritual 
saviour, who through infinite love would bring 



54 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

redemption and immortality to mankind. 
David in the poem essays to cheer Saul with 
the thought of the greatness that will live 
after him in the memory of others, but his 
own passionate desire to give something better 
than this to Saul awakens in him the assur- 
ance that God must be as full of love and 
compassion as he is. Thus Browning explains 
the sudden awakening of David, not as a 
divine revelation from without, but as a 
natural growth of the human spirit Godward. 
This new perception of values produces the 
ecstasy during which David sees his visions, 
the "witnesses, cohorts" about him, "angels, 
powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the 
aware." 

This whole conception was developed by 
Browning from the single phrase in I Samuel : 
"And David came to Saul, and stood before 
him: and he loved him greatly." In thus 
making David prophesy of an ideal which 
had not been evolved at his time. Browning 
indulges in what the biblical critic would call 
prophecy after the fact, and so throws himself 
in on the side of the mythical interpreters of 
the Bible. 

He has taken a historical narrative, embel- 
lished it poetically as in the imaginary ac- 
counts of the songs sung by David to Saul, 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 55 

and given it a philosophical content belonging 
on its objective side to the dawn of Christian- 
ity in the coming of Jesus himself and on its 
subjective side to his (the poet's) own time — 
that is, the idea of internal instead of external 
revelation — one of the ideas about which 
has been waged the so-called conflict of Science 
and Religion as it was understood by some of 
the most prominent thinkers of the latter 
half of the century. In this, again, it will be 
seen that Browning was in the van of the 
thought of the century, and still more was he 
in the van in the psychological tinge which 
he gives to David's experience. Professor 
William James himseM could not better have 
portrayed a case of religious ecstasy growing 
out pf genuine exaltation of thought than the 
poet has in David's experience. 

This poem undoubtedly sheds many rays 
of Hght upon the feehngs, at the time, of its 
writer. While he was a profound believer in 
the spiritual nature and needs of man, he was 
evidently not opposed to the contemporary 
methods of biblical criticism as applied to the 
prophecies of the Old Testament, for has he 
not himself worked in accord with the light 
such criticism had thrown upon the origin 
of prophecy? Furthermore, the poem is not 
only an instance of his belief in the supremacy 



56 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of the human spirit, but it distinctly repu- 
diates the Comtian ideal of a religion of 
humanity, and of an immortality existing 
only in the memory of others. The Comte 
philosophy growing out of a material concep- 
tion of the universe and a product of scien- 
tific thought has been one of the stro&g influ- 
ences through the whole of the nineteenth 
century in sociology and religion. While it 
has worked much good in developing a deeper 
interest in the social life of man, it has proved 
altogether unsatisfactory and barren as a 
religious ideal, though there are minds which 
seem to derive some sort of forlorn comfort 
from this religion of positivism — from such 
hopes as may be inspired by the worship of 
Humanity "as a continuity and soUdarity 
in time" without "any special existence, 
more largely composed of the dead than of 
the hving," by the thought of an immortality 
in which we shall be reunited with the remem- 
brance of our "grandsires" like Tyltyl and 
Mytyl in Maeterhnck's "Blue Bird." 

Here, as always, the poet throws in his 
weight on the side of the paramount worth 
of the individual, and of a conception of life 
which demands that the individual shall have 
a future world in which to overcome the flaws 
and imperfections incident to earthly hfe. 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 57 

Although, as I have tried to show, this poem 
undoubtedly bears witness to Browning's 
awareness to the thought currents of the day, 
it is couched in a form so dramatic, and in 
a language so poetic, that it seems like a spon- 
taneous outburst of belief in which feeling 
alone had played a part. Certainly, what- 
ever thoughts upon the subject may have 
been stowed away in the subconscious regions 
of the poet's mind, they well up here in a 
fountain of pure inspiration, carrying the 
thought forward on the wings of the poet's 
own spirit. 

Poems reflecting several phases of the 
turmoil of religious opinion rife in mid-century 
England are "Christmas Eve" and "Easter 
Day." BaflSing they are, even misleading to 
any one who is desirous of finding out the 
exact attitude of the poet's mind, for example, 
upon the rival doctrines of a Methodist parson 
and a German biblical critic. 

The Methodist Chapel and the German 
University might be considered as representa- 
tive of the extremes of thought in the more 
or less prescribed realm of theology, which 
largely through the influence of the filtering 
in of scientific and philosophic thought had 
divided itself into many sects. 

Within the Church of England itself there 



58 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

were high church and low church, broad 
church and Latitudinarian, into whose differ- 
ent shades of opinion it is not needful to enter 
here. Outside of the Established Church were 
the numerous dissenters, including Congre- 
gationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, 
Swedenborgians, Unitarians, and numerous 
others. 

There was one broad line of division be- 
tween the Established Church and the dis- 
senting bodies. In the first was inherent the 
ancient principle of authority, while the 
principle of self-government in matters of 
faith guided all the dissenters in their search 
for the light. 

It is not surprising that with so many 
differing shades of opinion within the bosom 
of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier 
half of the century, have lost its grip upon 
not only the people at large, but upon many 
of its higher intellects. The principle of 
authority seemed to be tottering to its fall. 
In this crisis the Roman Catholic Church 
exercised a peculiar fascination upon men of 
intellectual endowment who, fearing the direc- 
tion in which their intellect might lead them, 
turned to that church where the principle 
of authority kept itseff firmly rooted by sum- 
marily dismissing any one who might question 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 59 

it. It is of interest to remember that at the 
date when this poem was written the Trac- 
tarian Movement, in which was conspicuous 
the Oxford group of men, had succeeded in . 
carrying over four hundred clergymen and • 
laity into the Catholic Church. 

Those who were unafraid followed the lead 
of German criticism and French materialism, 
but the large mass of common people found 
in Methodism the sort of religious guidance 
which it craved. 

To this sect has been attributed an unpar- 
alleled influence in the moral development of 
England. By rescuing multitudes from igno- 
rance and from almost the degradation of 
beasts, and by fostering habits of industry 
and thrift, Methodism became a chief factor 
in building up a great, intelligent and indus- 
trious middle-class. Its influence has been 
felt even in the Established Church, and 
as its enthusiastic historians have pointed 
out, England might have suffered the pohtical 
and religious convulsions inaugurated by the 
French Revolution if it had not been for 
the saving grace of Methodism. 

Appealing at first to the poor and lowly, 
suffering wrong and persecution with its 
founder, Wesley, it was so flexible in its con- 
stitution that after the death of Wesley it 



60 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

broadened out and differentiated in a way 
that made it adaptable to very varied human 
needs. In consequence of this it finally 
became a genuine power in the Church and 
State of Great Britain. 

The poem "Christmas Eve" becomes much 
more understandable when these facts about 
Methodism are borne in mind — facts which 
were evidently in the poet's mind, although 
the poem itseM has the character of a symbolic 
rather than a personal utterance. The speaker 
might be regarded as a type of the religious 
conscience of England. In spite of whatever 
direct visions of the divine such a type of 
conscience may gain through the contempla- 
tion of nature and the revelations of the 
human heart, its relations to the past cause 
it to feel the need of some sectarian form of 
religion — a sort of inherited need to be 
orthodox in one form or another. This 
religious conscience has its artistic side; it 
can clothe its inborn religious instincts in 
exquisite imaginative vision. Also, it has its 
clear-sighted reasoning side. This is able 
unerringly to put its finger upon any flaw of 
doctrine or reasoning in the forms of religion 
it contemplates. Hence, Catholic doctrine, 
which was claiming the allegiance of those who 
\ were willing to put their troublesome intel- 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 61 

lects to sleep and accept authority where ^ 
rehgion was concerned, does not satisfy this 
keen analyzer. Nor yet is it able to see any 
religious reality in such a myth of Christ rehabi- 
litated as an ethical prophet as the Gottingen 
professor constructs in a manner so reminis- 
cent of a passage in Strauss's**Life of Jesus," 
where he is describing the opinions of the 
rationalists' school of criticism, that a com- 
parison with that passage is enlightening. 

Having swept away completely the super- 
natural basis of religion, the rationalist is 
able still to conceive of Jesus as a divine 
Messenger, a special favorite and charge of 
the Deity: 

"He had implanted in him by God the natural conditions 
only of that which he was ultimately to become, and his 
realization of this destiny was the result of his own spontane- 
ity. His admirable wisdom he acquired by the judicious 
application of his intellectual powers and the conscientious 
use of all the aids within his reach; his moral greatness, by the 
zealous culture of his moral dispositions, the restraint of his 
sensual inclinations and passions, and a scrupulous obedience 
to the voice of his conscience; and on these alone rested all 
that was exalted in his p>ersonality, all that was encouraging 
in his example." 

The difficulty to this order of mind of the 
direct personal revelation lies in the fact that 
it is convincing only to those who experience 



62 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

it, having no basis in authority, and may 
even for them lose its force. 

What then is the conclusion forced upon 
this English religious conscience? Simply 
this: that, though failing both from the 
intellectual and the aesthetic standpoint, the 
dissenting view was the only religious view of 
the time possessing any genuine vitality. It 
represented the progressive, democratic relig- 
ious force which was then in England bringing 
religion into the lives of the people with a 
positiveness long lost to the Anglican Church. 
The religious conscience of England was 
growing through this Methodist movement. 
This is why the speaker of the poem chooses 
at last that form of worship which he finds 
in the little chapel. 

While no one can doubt that the exalted 
mysticism based upon feeling, and the large 
tolerance of the poem, reflect most nearly the 
poet's personal attitude, on the other hand 
it is made clear that in his opinion the dis- 
senting bodies possessed the forms of religious 
orthodoxy most potent at the time for good. 

In ''Easter Day," the doubts and fears 
which have racked the hearts and minds of 
hundreds and thousands of individuals, as 
the result of the increase of scientific knowl- 
edge and biblical criticism are given more 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 63 

personal expression. The discussion turns 
principally upon the relation of the finite to 
the Infinite, a philosophical problem capable 
of much hair-splitting controversy, solved 
here in keeping with the prevailing thought 
of the century — namely, that the finite is 
relative and that this relativity is the proof 
of the Infinite. 

The boldness of this statement, one such 
as might be found in the pages of Spencer, 
is by Browning elaborated with pictorial and 
emotional power. Only by a marvelous vision 
is the truth brought home to the speaker 
that the beauties and joys of earth are not 
all-sufl5cient, but that they are in the poet's 
speech but partial beauty, though through 
this very limitation they become '^a pledge 
of beauty in its plenitude," gleams ''meant to 
sting with hunger for full light." It is not, 
however, until this see-er of visions perceives 
the highest gleam of earth that he is able 
to realize through the spiritual voice of his 
vision that the nature of the Infinite is in 
its essence Love, the supreme manifestation 
of which was symbolized in the death and 
resurrection of Christ. 

This revelation is nevertheless rendered 
null by the man's conviction that the vision 
was merely such "stuff as dreams are made 



64 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

on." At the end as at the beginning he finds 
it hard to be a Christian. 

His vision, which thus symboHzes his own 
course of emotionaHzed reasoning, brings 
hope but not conviction. Like the type in 
''Christmas Eve," conviction can come to 
him only through a behef in supernatural 
revelation. He is evidently a man of broad 
intellectual endowment, who cannot, as the 
Tractarians did, lay his mind asleep, and 
rest in the authority of a church, nor yet can 
he be satisfied with the unconscious anthropo- 
morphism of the sectarian. He doubts his 
own reasoning attempts to formulate religious 
doctrines, he doubts even the revelations of 
his own mystic states of consciousness; hence 
there is nothing for him but to flounder on 
through life as best he can, hoping, fearing, 
doubting, as many a serious mind has done 
owing to the nineteenth-century reaction 
against the supernatural dogmas of Chris- 
tianity. Like others of his ilk, he probably 
stayed in the Anglican Church and weakened 
it through his latitudinarianisms. 

A study in religious consciousness akin to 
this is that of Bishop Blougram. Here we 
have not a generalized type as in "Christmas 
Eve," nor an imaginary individual as in 
''Easter Day," but an actual study of a real 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 65 

man, it being no secret that Cardinal Wise- 
man was the inspiration for the poem. 

Wiseman's influence as a Catholic in the 
Tractarian movement was a powerful one, and 
in the poet's dissection of his psychology an 
attempt is made to present the reasoning by 
means of which he made his appeal to less 
independent thinkers. With faith as the 
basis of religion, doubt serves as a moral 
spur, since the will must exercise itself in 
keeping doubt underfoot. Browning, himself, 
might agree that aspiration toward faith was 
one of the tests of its truth, he might also 
consider doubt as a spur to greater aspiration, 
but these ideals would connote something 
different to him from what he makes them 
mean to Blougram. The poet's aspiration 
would be toward a belief in Omniscient Love 
and Power, his doubts would grow out of his 
inabihty to make this ideal tally with the 
sin and evil he beholds in life. Blougram's 
consciousness is on a lower plane. His aspira- 
tion is to believe in the dogmas of the Church, 
his doubts arise from an intellectual fear 
that the dogmas may not be true. Where 
Browning seems to miss comprehension of 
such a nature as Blougram's is in failing to 
recognize that on his own plane of conscious- 
ness genuine feeling and the perception of 



66 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

beauty play at least as large a part in the 
basis of his faith as utilitarian and instinctive 
reasoning do. While this poem shows in its 
references to the scientific theories of the origin 
of morals and its allusions to Strauss, as well 
as in the indirect portrayal of Gigadibs, the 
man emancipated from the Church, how 
entirely familiar the poet was with the cur- 
rents of rehgious and scientific thought, it 
falls short as a fair analysis of a man who 
is acknowledged to have wielded a tremendous 
religious influence upon Englishmen of the 
caliber of Cardinal Newman, Kingsley, Arnold, 
and others. 

If we leave out of account its connection 
with a special individual, the poem stands, 
however, as a delightful study of a type in 
which is depicted in passingly clever fashion 
methods of reasoning compounded of tanta- 
lizing gleams of truth and darkening sophis- 
tication. 

The poem which shows most completely 
the effect of contemporary biblical criticism 
on the poet is ''A Death in the Desert." It 
has been said to be an attempt to meet the 
destructive criticism of Strauss. The setting 
of the poem is wonderfully beautiful, while 
the portrayal of the mystical quality of 
John's reasoning is so instinct with religious 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 67 

feeling that it must be a wary reader indeed 
who does not come from the reading of this 
poem with the conviction that here, at least. 
Browning has declared himself unflinchingly 
on the side of supernatural Christianity in 
the face of the battering rams of criticism 
and the projectiles of science. 

But if he be a wary reader, he will discover 
that the argument for supernaturalism only 
amounts to this — and it is put in the mouth 
of John, who had in his youth been contem- 
porary with Christ — namely, that miracles 
had been performed when only by means of 
them faith was possible, though miracles were 
probably not what those who believed in them 
thought they were. Here is the gist of his 
defence of the supernatural: 

"I say, that as a babe, you feed awhile, 
Becomes a boy and fit to feed himself. 
So, minds at first must be spoon-fed with truth : 
When they can eat, babes' -nurture is withdrawn. 
I fed the babe whether it would or no: 
I bid the boy or feed himself or starve. 
I cried once, * That ye may believe in Christ, 
Behold this blind man shall receive his sight!' 
I cry now, * Urgest thou, for I am shrewd 
And smile at stories how John's word could cure — 
Repeat that miracle and take my faith?' 
I say, that miracle was duly wrought 
When save for it no faith was possible. 



68 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Whether a change were wrought in the shows o' the world, 
Whether the change came from our minds which see 
Of shows o' the world so much as and no more 
Than God wills for his purpose, — (what do I 
See now, suppose you, there where you see rock 
Round us?) — I know not; such was the effect. 
So faith grew, making void more miracles. 
Because too much they would compel, not help. 
I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it. 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 
Wouldst thou improve this to re-prove the proved? 
In life's mere minute, with power to use the proof. 
Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung? 
Thou hast it; use it and forthwith, or die!'* 

The important truth as seen by John's 
dying eyes is that faith in a beautiful ideal 
has been born in the human soul. Whether 
the accounts of the exact means by which 
this faith arose were literally true is of 
little importance, the faith itself is no less 
God-given, as another passage will make 
clear: 

"Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect 
He could not, what he knows now, know at first; 
What he considers that he knows to-day. 
Come but to-morrow, he will find misknown; 
Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns 
Because he lives, which is to be a man, 
Set to instruct himself by his past self; 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 69 

First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn. 
Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind. 
Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law. 
God's gift was that man should conceive of truth 
And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake 
As midway help till he reach fact indeed. " 

The defence of Christianity in this poem 
reminds one very strongly of the theology of 
Schleiermacher, a resume of which the poet 
might have found in Strauss's "Life of Jesus." 
Although Schleiermacher accepted and even 
went beyond the negative criticism of the 
rationalists against the doctrines of the 
Church, he sought to retain the essential 
aspects of positive Christianity. He starts 
out from the consciousness of the Christian, 
"from that internal experience resulting to 
the individual from his connection with the 
Christian community, and he thus obtains a 
material which, as its basis of feeling, is more 
flexible and to which it is easier to give dialec- 
tically a form that satisfies science." 

Again, "If we owe to him [Jesus] the con- 
tinual strengthening of the consciousness of 
God within us, this consciousness must have 
existed in him in absolute strength, so that 
it or God in the form of the consciousness 
was the only operative force within him. " 
In other words, in Jesus was the supreme 



70 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

manifestation of God in human consciousness. 
This truth, first grasped by means which 
seemed miraculous, is finally recognized in 
man's developing consciousness as a con- 
summation brought about by natural means. 
John's reasoning in the poem can lead to no 
other conclusion than this. 

Schleiermacher's theology has, of course, 
been objected to on the ground that if this 
incarnation of God was possible in one man, 
there is no reason why it should not frequently 
be possible. This is the orthodox objection, 
and it is voiced in the comment added by 
''One" at the end of the poem showing the 
weakness of John's argument from the strictly 
orthodox point of view. 

With regard to the miracles being natural 
events supernaturally interpreted — that is an 
explanation familiar to the biblical critic, and 
one which the psychologist of to-day is ready 
to support with numberless proofs and analy- 
ses. How much this poem owes to hints 
derived from Strauss's book is further illus- 
trated by the "Glossa of Theotypas," which 
is borrowed from Origen, whose theory is 
referred to by Strauss in his Introduction as 
follows: "Origen attributes a threefold mean- 
ing to the Scriptures, corresponding with his 
distribution of the human being into three 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 71 

parts, the liberal sense answering to the body, 
the moral to the soul, and the mystical to the 
spirit." 

On the whole, the poem appears to be 
influenced more by the actual contents of 
Strauss's book than to be deliberately directed 
against his thought, for John's own reasoning 
when his feelings are in abeyance might be 
deduced from more than one passage in this 
work wherein are passed in review the con- 
clusions of divers critics of the naturalist and 
rationalist schools of thought. 

The poem "An Epistle" purports to give 
a nearly contemporary opinion by an Arab 
physician upon the miracle of the raising of 
Lazarus. We have here, on the one hand, the 
Arab's natural explanation of the miracle as 
an epileptic trance prolonged some three days, 
and Lazarus's interpretation of his cure as 
a supernatural event. Though absolutely 
skeptical, the Arab cannot but be impressed 
with the beliefs of Lazarus, because of their 
revelation of God as a God of Love. Thus 
Browning brings out the power of the truth 
in the underlying ideas of Christianity, what- 
ever skepticism may be felt as to the letter 
of it. 

The effect of the trance upon the nature 
of Lazarus is paralleled to-day by accounts. 



72 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

given by various persons, of their sensations 
when they have sunk into unconsciousness 
nigh unto death. I remember reading of a 
case in which a man described his feehng of 
entire indifference as to the relations of Hfe, 
his joy in a sense of freedom and ineffable 
beauty toward which he seemed to be flying 
through space, and his disinclination to be 
resuscitated, a process which his spirit was 
watching from its heights with fear lest his 
friends should bring him back to earth. This 
higher sort of consciousness seems to have 
evolved in some people to-day without the 
intervention of such an experience as that 
of Lazarus or one such as that of the 
above subject of the Society for Psychical 
Research. 

In describing Lazarus to have reached such 
an outlook upon life. Browning again ranges 
himself with the most advanced psychological 
thought of the century. Hear Wilham James : 
"The existence of mystical states absolutely 
overthrows the pretension of non-mystical 
states to be the sole and ultimate dictators 
of what we may beUeve. As a rule, mystical 
states merely add a supersensuous meaning 
to the ordinary outward data of consciousness. 
They are excitements like the emotions of 
love or ambition, gifts to our spirit by means 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 73 

of which facts aheady objectively before us 
fall into a new expressiveness and make a 
new connection with our active life. They 
do not contradict these facts as such, or deny 
anything that our senses have immediately 
seized. It is the rationalistic critic rather 
who plays the part of denier in the contro- 
versy, and his denials have no strength, for 
there never can be a state of facts to which 
new meaning may not truthfully be added, 
provided the mind ascend to a more envelop- 
ing point of view. It must always remain 
an open question whether mystical states may 
not possibly be such superior points of view, 
windows through which the mind looks out 
upon a more extensive and inclusive world. 
The difference of the views seen from the 
different mystical windows need not prevent 
us from entertaining this supposition. The 
wider world would in that case prove to have 
a mixed constitution Uke that of this world, 
that is all. It would have its celestial and its 
infernal regions, its tempting and its saving 
moments, its valid experiences and its coun- 
terfeit ones, just as our world has them; but 
it would be a wider world all the same. We 
should have to use its experiences by selecting 
and subordinating and substituting just as 
is our custom in this ordinary naturalistic 



74 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

world; we should be liable to error just as we 
are now; yet the counting in of that wider 
world of meanings, and the serious dealing 
with it, might, in spite of all the perplexity, 
be indispensable stages in our approach to 
the final fulness of the truth." 

The vision of Lazarus belongs to the 
beatific realm, and the naturalistic Arab has 
a longing for similar strange vision, though he 
calls it a madman's, for — 

" So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — 
So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, *0 heart I made, a heart beats here! 
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine. 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love. 
And thou must love me who have died for thee. * '* 

A survey of Browning's contributions to 
the theological differences of the mid-century 
would not be complete without some reference 
to "Caliban" and "Childe Roland." In the 
former, the absurdities of anthropomorphism, 
of the God conceived in the likeness of man, 
are presented with dramatic and ironical force, 
but, at the same time, is shown the aspiration 
to something beyond, which has carried 
dogma through all the centuries, forward to 
ever purer and more spiritual conceptions of 
the absolute. In the second, though it be a 



BATTLE OF MIND AND SPIRIT 75 

purely romantic ballad, there seems to be 
symbolized the scientific knight-errant of the 
century, who, with belief and faith completely 
annihilated by the science which allows for 
no realm of knowledge beyond its own experi- 
mental reach, yet considers life worth living. 
Despite the complex interpretations which 
have issued from the oracular tripods of 
Browning Societies, one cannot read the last 
lines of this poem — 

"Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, 
And blew, 'Childe Roland to the dark Tower came''' — 

without thinking of the splendid courage in 
the face of disillusionment of such men of 
the century as Huxley, Tyndall or Clifford. 
When we ask, where is Browning in all this 
diversity of theological opinion .^^ we can only 
answer that beyond an ever-present under- 
current of religious aspiration there is no 
possibility of pinning the poet to any given 
dogmas. Everywhere we feel the dramatic 
artist. In "Paracelsus" the philosophy of 
life was that of the artist whose adoration 
finds its completion in beauty and joy; now 
the poet himself is the artist experiencing as 
Aprile did, this beauty and joy in a boundless 
sympathy with many forms of mystical relig- 
ious ecstasy. Every one of these poems pre- 



76 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

sents a conflict between the doubts born of 
some phase of theological controversy and the 
exaltation of moments or periods of ecstatic 
vision, and though nowhere is dogmatic truth 
asserted with positiveness, everywhere we feel 
a mystic sympathy with the moving power 
of religious aspiration, a sympathy which 
belongs to a form of consciousness perhaps 
more inclusive than the religious — namely, 
a poetic consciousness, able at once to sympa- 
thize with the content and to present the 
forms of mystic vision belonging to various 
phases of human consciousness. 



n 

THE century's END: PROMISE OF PEACE 

PASSING onward from this mid-century 
phase of Browning's interest in what I 
have called the battle of the mind and the 
spirit, we find him in his later poems taking up 
the subject in its broader aspects, more as he 
treated it in "Paracelsus," yet with a marked 
difference in temper. God is no longer con- 
ceived of merely as a divine creator, joying 
in the wonder and beauty of his creations. 
The ideal of the artist has been modified by 
the observation of the thinker and the feeling 
induced by human rather than by artistic 
emotion. Life's experiences have shown to 
the more humanly conscious Browning that 
the problem of evil is not one to be so easily 
dismissed. The scientist may point out that 
evil is but lack of development, and the lover 
and artist may exult when he sees the won- 
derful processes of nature and mind carrying 
forward development until he can picture a 
time when the evil shall become null and 
void, but the human, feeling being sees the 

77 



78 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

misery and the unloveliness of evil. It does 
not satisfy him to know that it is lack of 
development or the outcome of lack of de- 
velopment, nor yet that it will grow less as 
time goes on he ponders the problem, *'why 
is evil permitted, how is it to be harmonized 
with the existence of a universe planned upon 
a scheme which he believes to be the outcome 
of a source all-powerful and all-loving!" 

About this problem and its corollary, the 
conception of the injBnite, Browning's latter- 
day thought revolves as it did in his middle 
years about the basis of religious belief. 

It is one of the strange freaks of criticism 
that many admirers of Browning's earlier 
work have failed to see the importance of his 
later poems, especially "Ferishtah's Fancies," 
and "The Parleyings," not only as expressions 
of the poet's own spiritual growth, but as 
showing his mental grasp of the problems 
which the advance of nineteenth-century 
scientific thought brought to the fore in the 
last days of the century. 

The date at which various critics have 
declared that Browning ceased to write poetry 
might be considered an index of the time 
when that critic's powers became atrophied. 
No less a person than Edmund Gosse is of the 
opinion that since 1868 the poet's books were 



PROMISE OF PEACE 79 

chiefly valuable as keeping alive popular 
interest in him, and as leading fresh gener- 
ations of readers to what he had already pub- 
lished. Fortunately it has long been admitted 
that Homer sometimes nods, though not 
with such awful efifect as was said to at- 
tend the nods of Jove. Hence, in spite of 
Mr. Gosse's undoubted eminence as a critic, 
we may dare to assume that in this particular 
instance he fell into the ancient and dis- 
tinguished trick of nodding. 

If Mr. Gosse were right, it would practi- 
cally put on a par with a mere advertising 
scheme many poems which have now be- 
come household favorites. Take, for exam- 
ple, ''Herve Riel." Think of the blue-eyed 
Breton hero whom all the world has learned to 
love through Browning, tolerated simply as 
an index finger to "The Pied Piper of Hame- 
lin." Take, too, such poems, as "Donald." 
This man's dastardly sportsmanship is so viv- 
idly portrayed that it has the power to arouse 
strong emotion in strong men, who have been 
known literally to break down in the middle 
of it through excess of feeling; "Ivan Ivano- 
vitch," in which is embodied such fear and 
horror that weak hearts cannot stand the 
strain of hearing it read; the story of the 
dog Tray, who rescued a drowning doll with 



80 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

the same promptitude as he did a drowning 
child — at the relation of whose noble deeds 
the eyes of little children grow eager with 
excitement and sympathy. And where is 
there in any poet's work a more vivid bit 
of tragedy than *'A Forgiveness?" 

And would not an unfillable gap be left in 
the ranks of our friends of the imaginative 
world if Balaustion were blotted out? — the 
exquisite lyric girl, brave, tender and with a 
mind in which wisdom and wit are fair play 
fellows. 

As Carlyle might say, *' Verily, verily, Mr. 
Gosse, thou hast out-Homered Homer, and 
thy nod hath taken upon itself very much the 
semblance of a snore. " 

These and many others which might be 
mentioned since the date when Mr. Gosse 
autocratically put up the bars to the poet's 
genius are now universally accepted. There 
are others, however, such as *'The Red Cotton 
Night-cap Country," "The Inn Album," 
"Aristophanes' Apology," "Fifine at the 
Fair, " which are liable at any time to attacks 
from atrophied critics, and among these are 
the groups of poems which are to form the 
center of our present discussion. 

Without particularizing either critics or 
criticism it may be said that criticism of these 



PROMISE OF PEACE 81 

poems divides itself into the usual three 
branches — one which objects to their philos- 
ophy, one which objects to their art, one 
which finds them difficult of comprehension 
at all. This last criticism may easily be dis- 
posed of by admitting it is in part true. 
The mind whose highest reaches of poetic 
inspiration are ministered unto by such simple 
and easily understandable lyrics as "Twinkle, 
twinkle, Httle star, " might not at once grasp 
the significance of the Parleying with George 
Bubb Dodington. Indeed, it may be sur- 
mised that some minds might sing upon the 
starry heights with Hegel and fathom the 
equivalence of being and non-being, and yet 
be led into a slough of despond by this same 
cantankerous George. 

But a poetical slough of despond may be 
transfigured in the twinkling of an eye — 
after a proper amount of study and hard 
thinking — into an elevated plateau with 
prospects upon every side, grand or terrible or 
smiling. 

Are we never to feel spurred to any poetical 
pleasure more vigorous than dilly-dallying 
with Keats while we feast our eyes upon the 
wideness of the seas? or lazily floating in a 
lotos land with Tennyson, perhaps, among 
the meadows of the Musketaquid, in canoes 



82 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

with silken cushions? Beauty and peace are 
the reward of such poetical pleasures. They 
fall upon the spirit like the *' sweet sound that 
breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and 
giving odor," but shall we never return from 
the land where it is always afternoon? Is it 
only in such a land as this that we realize the 
true power of emotion? Rather does it con- 
duce to the slumber of emotion, for progress is 
the law of feeling as it is the law of hfe, and 
many times we feel — yes, feel — with tre- 
mendous rushes of enthusiasm like chmbing 
Matterhorns with great iron nails in our 
shoes, with historical and archaeological 
and philosophical Alpen-stocks in our hands, 
and when we reach the summit what unsus- 
pected beauties become ours! 

Then let us hear no more of the critic who 
wishes Browning had ceased to write in 1868 
or at any other date. It may be said of him, 
not as of Whitman, "he who reads my book 
touches a man," but '*he who reads my 
poems from start to finish grasps the life and 
thought of a century. " 

There will be no exaggeration in claiming 
that these two series of poems form the key- 
stone to Browning's whole work. They are 
Hke a final synthesis of the problems of ex- 
istence which he has previously portrayed 



PROMISE OF PEACE 83 

and analyzed from myriad points of view in 
his dramatic presentation of character and his 
dramatic interpretations of spiritual moods. 

In "Pauline," before the poet's personality 
became more or less merged in that of his 
characters, we obtain a direct glimpse of the 
poet's own artistic temperament, and may 
literally acquaint ourselves with those quali- 
ties which were to be a large influence in 
moulding his work. 

As described by himself, the poet of "Paul- 
ine" was 

"Made up of an intensest life, 
Of a most clear idea of consciousness 
Of self, distinct from all its qualities. 
From all affections, passions, feelings, powers; 
And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all: 
But linked in me to self-supremacy, 
Existing as a center to all things. 
Most potent to create and rule and call 
Upon all things to minister to it. " 

This sense of an over-consciousness is the 
mark of an objective poet — one who sym- 
pathizes with all the emotions and aspira- 
tions of humanity — interprets their actions 
through the light of this sympathy, and at 
the same time keeps his own individuality 
distinct. 

The poet of this poem discovers that he 



84 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

can no longer lose himself with enthusiasm in 
any phase of life; but what does that mean to 
a soul constituted as his? It means that the 
way has been cleared for the birth of that 
greater, broader love of the fully developed 
artist soul which, while entering into sym- 
pathy with all phases of life, finds its true 
complement only in an ideal of absolute 
Love. 

This picture of the artist aspiring toward 
the absolute by means of his large human 
sympathy may be supplemented by the theory 
of man's relation to the universe involved in 
''Paracelsus" as we have seen. 

From this point in his work. Browning, 
like the Hindu Brahma, becomes manifest 
not as himself, but in his creations. The poet 
whose portrait is painted for us in "Pauline" 
is the same poet who sympathetically presents 
a whole world of human experiences to us, 
and the philosopher whose portrait is drawn 
in "Paracelsus" is the same who interprets 
these human experiences in the light of the 
great life theories therein presented. 

But as the creations of Brahma return into 
himself, so the human experiences Browning 
has entered into artistic sympathy with return 
to enrich his completed view of the problems 
of life, when, like his own Rabbi Ben Ezra, he 



PROMISE OF PEACE 85 

reaches the last of Kfe for which the first was 
planned in these ''Fancies" and "Parleyings. " 

Though these two groups of poems un- 
doubtedly express the poet's own mature 
conclusions, they yet preserve the dramatic 
form. Several things are gained in this way: 
First, the poems are saved from didacticism, 
for the poet expresses his opinions as an in- 
dividual, and not in his own person as a 
seer, trying to implant his theories in the 
minds of disciples. Second, variety is given 
and the mind stimulated by having opposite 
points of view presented, while the thought 
is infused with a certain amount of emotional 
force through the heat of argument. 

It has frequently been objected, not only 
of these poems, but upon general grounds, 
that philosophical and ethical problems are 
not fit subjects for treatment in poetry. 
There is one point which the critic of aesthet- 
ics seems in danger of never realizing — namely, 
that the law of evolution is differentiation, 
in art as well as in cosmic, organic, and social 
life. It is just as prejudiced and unforeseeing 
in these days to hmit poetry to this or that 
kind of a subject, or to say that nothing is 
dramatic which does not deal with immediate 
action, as it would have been for Homer to 
declare that no poem would ever be worthy 



86 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

the name that did not contain a catalogue of 
ships. 

These facts exist! We have dramas deal- 
ing merely with action, dramas in which char- 
acter development is of prime importance; 
dramas wherein action and character are 
entirely synchronous; and those in which 
the action means more than appears upon 
the surface, like Hauptmann's " Sunken Bell, " 
or Ibsen's "Master Builder"; then why not 
dramas of thought and dramas of mood when 
the brain and heart become the stage of action 
instead of an actual stage. 

Surely such an extension of the possibilities 
of dramatic art is a development quite 
natural to the intellectual ferment of the 
nineteenth century. As the man in "Half 
Rome" says, "Facts are facts and lie not, and 
the question, 'How came that purse the 
poke o' you.^' admits of no reply." 

By using the dramatic form, the poet has 
furthermore been enabled to give one a deep 
sense of the characteristics peculiar to the 
century. The latter half of Victorian Eng- 
land in its thought phases lives just as surely 
in these poems as Renaissance Italy in its art 
phases in "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Andrea del 
Sarto," and the rest; and this is true though 
the first series is cast in the form of Persian 



PROMISE OF PEACE 87 

fables and the second in the form of "Parley- 
ings" with worthies of past centuries. 

It may be worth while for the benefit of the 
reader not thoroughly familiar with these later 
poems to pass quickly in review the problems 
in them upon which Browning bends his poet's 
insight. 

Nothing bears upon the grounds of moral 
action more disastrously than blind fatalism, 
and while there have been many evil forms of 
this doctrine in the past there has probably 
been none worse than the modern form, be- 
cause it seems to have sanction in the scien- 
tific doctrines of the conservation of energy, 
the persistence of heredity, and the survival 
of the fittest. Even the wise and the thought- 
ful with wills atrophied by scientific phases of 
fatalism allow themselves to drift upon what 
they call the laws of development, possessing 
evidently no realizing sense that the will of 
man, whether it be in the last analysis abso- 
lutely free or not, is a prime factor in the work- 
ing of these laws. Such people will hesitate, 
therefore, to throw in their voices upon either 
side in the solution of great national problems, 
because, things being bound to follow the 
laws of development, what matters a single 
voice ! Such arguments were frequently heard 
among the wise in our own country during the 



88 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Cuban and Philippine campaigns. Upon this 
attitude of mind the poet gives his opinion 
in the first of ''Ferishtah's Fancies," *'The 
Eagle." It is a strong plea for the exercise 
of those human impulses that lead to action. 
The will to serve the world is the true force 
from God. Every man, though he be the last 
link in a chain of causes over which he had no 
control, can, at least, have a determining 
influence upon the direction in which the next 
link shall be forged. Ferishtah appears upon 
the scene, himself, a fatalist, leaving himself 
wholly in God's hands, until he is taught by 
the dream God sent him that man's part is 
to act as he saw the eagle act, succoring the 
helpless, not to play the part of the helpless 
birdlings. 

Another phase of the same thought is 
brought out in "A Camel Driver," where the 
discussion turns upon punishment. The 
point is, if, as Ferishtah declares, the sinner 
is not to be punished eternally, then why 
should man trouble himseK to punish him? 
Universalist doctrines are here put into the 
mouth of Ferishtah, and not a few modern 
philanthropists would agree with Ferishtah's 
questioners that punishment for sins (the 
manifestations of inherited tendencies for 
which the sinners are not responsible) is 



PROMISE OF PEACE 89 

no longer admissible. Ferishtah's answer 
amounts to this. That no matter what 
causes for beneficent ends may be visible to 
the Divine mind in the allowance of the ex- 
istence of sin, nor yet the fact that Divine 
love demands that punishment shall not be 
eternal; man must regard sin simply from 
the human point of view as absolute evil, and 
must will to work for its annihilation. It 
follows then that the punishing of a sinner is 
the means by which he may be taught to 
overcome the sin. There is the added thought, 
also, that the suffering of the conscience over 
the subtler sins which go unpunished is all the 
hell one needs. 

Another doctrine upon which the nine- 
teenth-century belief in progress as the law of 
life has set its seal is that of the pursuit of 
happiness, or the striving for the greatest good 
of the whole number in which oneself is not 
to be excluded. With this doctrine Browning 
shows himself in full sympathy in "Two Cam- 
els," wherein Ferishtah contends that only 
through the development of individual happi- 
ness and the experiencing of many forms of 
joyousness can one help others to happiness 
and joyousness, while in "Plot Culture" the 
enjoyment of human emotion asi a means of 
developing the soul is emphasized. 



90 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

The relation of good and evil in their 
broader aspects occupy the poet's attention 
in others of this group. Nineteenth-century 
thought brought about a readjustment of these 
relations. Good and evil as absolutely de- 
finable entities gave place to the doctrine that 
good and evil are relative terms, a phrase 
which we sometimes forget must be under- 
stood in two ways: first, that good and evil 
are relative to the state of society in which 
they exist. What may be good according 
to the ethics of a Fejee Islander would not 
hold in the civilized society of to-day. This 
is the evil of lack of development which in the 
long run becomes less. On the other hand, 
there is the evil of suffering and pain which 
it is more difficult to reconcile with the idea 
of omnipotent power. In "Mihrab Shah," 
Browning gives a solution of this problem 
in consonance with the idea that were it 
not for evil we should not have learned how 
to appreciate the good, to work for it, and, 
in doing so, bring about progress. 

To his pupil, worried over this problem, 
Ferishtah points out that evil in the form of 
bodily suffering has given rise to the beautiful 
sentiments of pity and sympathy. Having 
proved in this way that good really grows 
out of evil, there is still the query, shall evil 



PROMISE OF PEACE 91 

be encouraged in order that good may be 
evolved ? " No ! " Perish tah declares, man 
bound by man's conditions is obliged to esti- 
mate as "fair or foul right, wrong, good, evil, 
what man's faculty adjudges as such," there- 
fore the man will do all he can to relieve the suf- 
fering or poor Mihrab Shah with a fig plaster. 

The final answers, then, which Browning 
gives to the ethical problems which grew out 
of the acceptance of modern scientific doc- 
trines are, in brief, that man shall use that 
will-power of which he feels himself possessed 
— the power really distinguishing him from 
the brute creation — in working against what- 
ever appears to him to be evil; while that good 
for which he shall work is the greatest happi- 
ness of all. 

In the remaining poems of the group we 
have the poet's mature word upon the philo- 
sophical doctrine of the relativity of knowl- 
edge, a doctrine which received the most 
elaborate demonstration from Herbert Spen- 
cer in many directions. It is insisted upon in 
"Cherries," "The Sun," in "A Bean Stripe 
also Apple Eating," and especially in that 
remarkable poem, "A Pillar at Sebzevar." 
That knowledge fails is the burden of these 
poems. Knowledge the golden is but lac- 
quered ignorance, as gain to be mistrusted. 



92 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Curiously enough, this contention of Brown- 
ing's has been the cause of most of the criti- 
cisms against him as a thinker, yet the deepest 
thinkers of to-day as well as many in the past 
have held the opinio in some form or another 
that the intellect was unable to solve the 
mysterious problems of the universe. Even 
the metaphysicians who build their unstable 
air castles on a priori ideas declare these ideas 
cannot be matters of mere intellectual per- 
ception, but must be intuitions of the higher 
reason. Browning, however, does not rest 
in the mere assertion that the intellect fails. 
From this truth, so disconcerting to many, he 
draws immense comfort. Though intellectual 
knowledge be mistrusted as gain, it is not to be 
mistrusted as means to gain, for through its 
very failure it becomes a promise of greater 
things. 

"Friend," quoth Ferishtah in "A Pillar of 
Sebzevar, " 

"As gain — mistrust it! Nor as means to gain: 

Lacquer we learn by: cast in firing-pot, 

We learn — when what seemed ore assayed proves dross 

SureUer true gold's worth, guess how purity 

I* the lode were precious could one light on ore 

Clarified up to test of crucible. 

The prize is in the process: knowledge means 

Ever-renewed assurance by defeat 

That victory is somehow still to reach. ** 



PROMISE OF PEACE 93 

For men with minds of the type of Spencer's 
this negative assurance of the Infinite is 
suflScient, but human beings as a rule will not 
rest satisfied with such cold abstractions. 
Though Job said thousands of years, ago 
''Who by searching can find out God," man- 
kind still continues to search. They long to 
know something of the nature of the divine 
as well as to be assured of its existence. In 
this very act of searching Browning declares 
the divine becomes most directly manifest. 

From the earliest times of which we have 
any record man has been aspiring toward God. 
Many times has he thought he had found 
him, but with enlarged perceptions he dis- 
covered later that what he had found was only 
God's image built up out of his own human 
experiences. 

This search of man for the divine is de- 
scribed with great power and originality in the 
Fancy called "The Sun," under the symbol of 
the man who seeks the prime Giver that he 
may give thanks where it is due for a pala- 
table fig. This search for God, Browning calls 
love, meaning by that the moving, aspiring 
force of the whole universe in its multifarious 
manifestations, from the love that goes forth 
in thanks for benefits received, through the 
aspiration of the artist toward beauty, of the 



94 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

lover toward human sympathy, even of the 
scientist toward knowledge, to the lover of 
humanity Uke Ferishtah, who declares, "I 
know nothing save that love I can, bound- 
lessly, endlessly. " 

The poet argues from this that if mankind 
has with ever-increasing fervor aspired toward 
a God of Love, and has ever developed 
toward broader conceptions of human love, 
it is only reasonable to infer that in his nature 
God has some attribute which corresponds to 
human love, though it transcend our most 
exalted imagining of it. 

At the end of the century a book was 
written in America in which an argument simi- 
lar to this was used to prove the existence of 
God. This book was ''Through Nature to 
God," by John Fiske, whose earher work, 
" Cosmic Philosophy ," did much to familiarize 
the American reading public with the evolu- 
tionary philosophy of Spencer. 

"Fiske claimed that his theory was en- 
tirely original, yet no one familiar with the 
thought of Browning could fail to see the 
similarity of their points of view. Fiske 
based his proof upon analogies drawn from 
the evolution of organic life in following out 
the law of the adjustment of inner to outer 
relations. For example, since the eye has 




Herbert Spencer 



PROMISE OF PEACE 95 

through seons of time gradually adjusted it- 
self into harmony with light, why should not 
man's search for God be the gradual adjust- 
ment of the soul into harmony with the 
infinite spirit? This adjustment, as Browning 
expresses it, is that of human love to divine 
love. 

Other modern thinkers, notably Schleier- 
macher in Germany and Shaftsbury in Eng- 
land, have placed the basis of religious truth 
in feeling. The idea is thus not a new one. 
Yet in Browning's treatment of it the con- 
ception has taken on new life, partly because 
of the intensity of conviction with which it is 
expounded in these later poems, and partly 
because of its having been so closely knit into 
the scientific thought of the century. 

Optimistically the thought is finally rounded 
out in "A Bean Stripe also Apple Eating," in 
which Ferishtah argues that life in spite of the 
evil in it seems to him on the whole good. 
He cannot believe that evil is not meant to 
serve a good purpose since he is so sure that 
God is infinite in love. 

From all this it will be seen that Browning 
accepts with Spencerians the negative proof 
of God growing out of the failure of intellect 
to grasp the realities underlying all phenom- 
ena, but adds to it the positive proof based 



96 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

upon emotion. The true basis of belief is the 
intuition of God that comes from the direct 
revelation of feeling in the human heart, 
which has been at once the motive force of the 
search for God and the basis of a conception 
of the nature of God. 

It was a stroke of genius on the part of the 
poet to present such problems in Persian 
guise, for Persia stands in Zoroastrianism 
for the dualism which Ferishtah with his 
progressive spirit decries In his recognition of 
the part evil plays in the development of 
good, and through Mahometanism for the 
Fatalism Ferishtah learned to cast from him. 
The Persian atmosphere is preserved through- 
out not only by the introduction constantly of 
Persian allusions traceable to the great Per- 
sian epic, "The Shah Nameh," but by the 
telUng of fables in the Persian manner to 
point the morals intended. 

With the exception of the first Fancy, de- 
rived from a fable of Bidpai's, we have the 
poet's own word that all the others are 
inventions of his own. These clever stories 
make the poems lively reading in spite of their 
ethical content. Ferishtah is drawn with 
strong strokes. Wise and clever he stands 
before us, reminding us at times of Socrates — 
never at a loss for an answer no matter what 



PROMISE OF PEACE 97 

bothersome questions his pupils may pro- 
pound. 

If we see the thoughtful and brilliant 
Browning in the *' Fancies" proper, we per- 
haps see even more clearly the emotional and 
passionate Browning in the lyrics which add 
variety and an unwonted charm to the whole. 
This feature is also borrowed from Persian 
form, an interesting example of which has been 
given to English readers in Edwin Arnold's 
'*Gulistan" or "Rose Garden" of the poet 
SaMi. Indeed Browning evidently derived 
the hint for his humorous prologue in which he 
likens the poems to follow to an Italian dish 
made of ortolans on toast with a bitter sage 
leaf, symbolizing sense, sight, and song from 
Sa'di's preface to the *'Rose Garden, " wherein 
he says, "Yet will men of light and learning, 
from whom the true countenance of a dis- 
course is not concealed, be well aware that 
herein the pearls of good counsel which heal 
are threaded on strings of right sense; that the 
bitter physic of admonition is constantly 
mingled with the honey of good humor, so that 
the spirits of listeners grow not sad, and that 
they remain not exempt from blessings of 
acceptance. " 

A further interest attaches to these lyrics 
because they form a series of emotional 



98 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

phases in the soul-Hfe of two lovers whom we 
are probably justified in regarding as Mr. and 
Mrs. Browning. One naturally thinks of 
them as companion pictures to Mrs. Brown- 
ing's "Sonnets from the Portuguese." In 
these the sunrise of a great love is portrayed 
with intense and exalted passion, while the 
lyrics in "Ferishtah's Fancies" reflect the 
subsequent development of such a love, 
through the awakening of whole new realms of 
feeling, wherein love for humanity is enlarged 
criticism from the one beloved welcome; all 
the little trials of life dissolved in the new 
light; and divine love realized with a force 
never before possible. 

Do we not see a living portrait of the two 
poets in the lyric " So the head aches and the 
limbs are faint? " Many a hint may be 
found in the Browning letters to prove that 
Mrs. Browning with just such afrail body 
possessed a fire of spirit that carried her con- 
stantly toward attainment, while he, with all 
the vigor of splendid health, could with truth 
have frequently said, "In the soul of me sits 
sluggishness. " These exquisite lyrics, which, 
whether they conform to Elizabethan models 
or not, are as fine as anything ever done in 
this form, are crowned by the epilogue in 
which we hear the stricken husband crying 



PROMISE OF PEACE 99 

out to her whom twenty years eariier he had 
called his "lyric love," in a voice doubting, 
yet triumphing in the thought that his life- 
long optimism is the light radiating from the 
halo which her human love had irised round 
his head. 

No more emphatic way than the inter- 
spersion of these emotional lyrics could have 
been chosen to bring home the poet's con- 
viction of the value of emotion in finding a 
positive basis for religious belief. 

In the '' Parley ings" the discussions turn 
principally upon artistic problems and their 
relation to modern thought. Four out of the 
seven were inspired by artist, poet or musi- 
cian. The forgotten worthies whom Brown- 
ing rescued from obhvion make their appeal 
to him upon various grounds that connect 
them with the present. 

Bernard de Mandeville evidently caught 
Browning's fancy, because in his satirical 
poem, "The Grumbling Hive," he forestalled, 
by a defence of the Duke of Marlborough's 
war policy, the doctrine of the relativity of 
good and evil. This subject, though so fully 
treated in the "Fancies," still continued to 
fascinate Browning, who seemed to feel the 
need of thinking his way through all its 
implications. Fresh interest is added in this 



100 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

case because the objector in the argument was 
the poet's contemporary Carlyle, whose well- 
known pessimism in regard to the existence 
of evil is graphically presented. 

Browning clenches his side of the argument 
with an original and daring variation upon 
the Prometheus myth led up to by one of the 
most magnificent passages in the whole range 
of his poetry, and probably the finest exam- 
ple anywhere in literature of a description of 
nature as interpreted by the laws of cosmic 
evolution. A comparison of this passage 
with the one in ''Paracelsus" brings out very 
clearly the exact measure of the advance in the 
poet's thought during the fifty years between 
which they were written — 1835 and 1887. 
While in the "Paracelsus" passage it is the 
thought of the joy in the creator's soul for his 
creations, and the participation of mankind 
in this joy of progression while pleasure 
climbs its heights forever and forever, 
which occupies the poet's mind, in the later 
passage, there is no attempt at a definite 
conception of the divine nature. Force 
represented in the sunlight is described as 
developing life upon the earth. The thrill 
of this life-giving power is felt by all things, 
and is unquestioningly accepted and delighted 
in. 



PROMISE OF PEACE 101 

"Everywhere 
Did earth acknowledge Sun's embrace sublime 

ThrilHng her to the heart of things : since there 

No ore ran hquid, no spar branched anew. 

No arrowy crystal gleamed, but straightway grew 

Glad through the inrush — glad nor more nor less 

Than, 'neath his gaze, forest and wilderness, 

Hill, dale, land, sea, the whole vast stretch and spread. 

The universal world of creatures bred 

By Sun's munificence, alike gave praise." 

Man alone questions. His mind reaches 
out for knowledge of the cause; he would 
know its nature. Man's mind will not give 
any definite answer to this question. But 
Prometheus offered an artifice whereby man's 
mind is satisfied. He drew sun's rays into a 
focus plain and true. The very sun in httle : 
made fire burn and henceforth do man service. 
Denuded of its scientific and mystical sym- 
bolism, Browning thus makes the Prometheus 
myth teach his favorite doctrine, namely, 
that the image of love formed in the human 
heart by means of the burning glass supplied 
by sense and feeling is a symbol of infinite 
love. 

Daniel Bartoh, a Jesuit of the seventeenth 
century who is dyed and doubly dyed in super- 
stition, is set up by Browning in the next 
poem simply to be knocked down again upon 
the ground that all the legendary saints 



102 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

he worshipped could not compare with a 
real woman the poet knows. The romantic 
story of the lady is told in Browning's most 
fascinating narrative style, so rapid and 
direct that it has all the force of a dramatic 
sketch. The heroine's claim upon the poet's 
admiration consists in her recognition of the 
sacredness of love, which she will not dis- 
honor for worldly considerations, and finding 
her betrothed incapable of attaining her height 
of nobleness, she leaves him free. 

This story bears upon the poet's philoso- 
phy as it reflects his attitude toward human 
love, which he considers so clearly a revelation 
that any treatment of it not absolutely noble 
and true to the highest ideals is a sin against 
heaven itself. 

George Bubb Dodington is the black sheep 
of these later poems. He gives the poet an 
opportunity to let loose all his subtlety and 
sarcasm, while the reader may exercise his wits 
in discovering that the poet assumes to agree 
with Dodington in his doubtful doctrine of 
serving the state with an eye always upon his 
own private welfare, and pretends to criticise 
him only for his method of attaining his ends. 
His method is to disclaim that he works for 
any other good than that of the State — 
a proposition so preposterous in his case 



PROMISE OF PEACE 103 

that nobody would believe it. The poet then 
presents what purports to be the correct 
method of successful statesmanship — namely, 
to pose as a superior being endowed with the 
divine right to rule, treating everybody as 
his puppet, and entirely scornful of any 
criticisms against himself. If he will adopt 
this attitude he may change his tactics 
every year and the people, instead of 
suspecting his sincerity, will think that he 
has wise reasons beyond their insight for his 
changes. The poem is a powerful, intensely 
cynical argument against the imperialistic 
temper and in favor of liberal government. 
This means for the individual not only the 
right but the power to judge for himself, 
instead of being obliged to depend, because of 
his own inefficiency, upon the leadership of the 
over-man, whose intentions are unfortunately 
too seldom to be trusted. 

The poet called from the shades by Brown- 
ing, Christopher Smart, is celebrated in the 
world of criticism for having only once in his hf e 
written a great poem. The eulogies upon the 
beauties of ^'The Song of David" might not 
be echoed by all lay readers of poetry; nor 
is it of any moment whether Browning 
actually agreed with the conclusions of the 
critics, since the episode is used merely as a 



104 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

text for discussing the problem of beauty 
versus truth in art. Should the poet's prov- 
ince be simply to record his vision of the 
beauty and the strength of nature and the 
universe — visions which come to him in 
moments of inspiration such as that which 
came once to Christopher Smart? Browning 
answers the question characteristically with 
his feet upon the earth. The visions of poets 
should not be considered as ends in themselves, 
but as material to be used for greater ends. 

The poet should find his inspiration in the 
human heart, and climb to heaven by its 
means, not investigate the heavens first. 
Diligently must he study mankind, and teach 
as man may through his knowledge. 

In "Francis Furini" the subject is the nude 
in art. The keynote is struck by the poet's 
declaring he will never believe the tale told 
by Baldinicci that Furini ordered all his 
pictures in which there were nude figures 
burned. He expresses his indignation at the 
tale vigorously at some length, showing 
plainly his own sympathies. 

The passage in the poem bearing more 
especially upon the present discussion is the 
lecture by Furini imagined by the poet to 
have been delivered before a London audience. 
It is a long and recondite speech in which 



PROMISE OF PEACE 105 

the scientific and the intuitional methods of 
arriving at truth are compared. While the 
scientific method is acknowledged to be of 
value, the intuitional method is claimed as 
by far the more important. 

A philippic against Greek art and its 
imitation is dehvered by the poet in the 
"Parleying with Gerard de Lairesse," whom he 
makes the scapegoat of his strictures, on the 
score of a book Lairesse wrote in which was 
described a walk through a Dutch landscape 
when every feature was transmogrified by clas- 
sic imaginings. 

To this good soul, an old sepulcher struck by 
lightning became the tomb of Phaeton, and 
an old cartwheel half buried in the sand near 
by, the Chariot of the Sun. 

In a spirit of bravado Browning proceeds to 
show what he himseH could make of a walk 
provided he condescended to illuminate it 
by classic metaphor and symbol, and a re- 
markable passage is the result. It occupies 
from the eighth to the twelfth stanza. It 
is meant to be in derision of a grandiloquent, 
classically embroidered style but so splendid 
is the language, so haunting the pictures, the 
symbohsm so profound that it is as if a God 
were showing some poor weakling mortal 
how not to do it — and through his omni- 



106 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

science must perforce create something won- 
drously beautiful. The double feeling pro- 
duced in reading this passage only adds to its 
interest. After thus classicizing in a manner 
that might make Euripides, himself, turn 
green with envy, he nonchalantly remarks: 

"Enough, stop further fooling," and to 
show how a modern poet greets a landscape he 
flings in the perfectly simple and irresistible 
little lyric: 

"Dance, yellows, and whites and reds.'* 

The poet's strictures upon classicism are 
entirely consonant with his philosophy, plac- 
ing as he does the paramount importance on 
living realities, "Do and nowise dream," he 
exclaims: 

"Earth's young significance is all to learn; 
The dead Greek love lies buried in its urn 
Where who seeks fire finds ashes." 

The "Parleying" with Charles Avison is 
more a poem of moods than any of the others. 
The poet's profound appreciation of music is 
reflected in his claiming it as the highest 
artistic expression possible to man. Sadness 
comes to him, however, at the thought of the 
ephemeralness of its forms, a fact that is borne 
in on him because of the inadequateness of 



PROMISE OF PEACE 107 

Avison's old march styled "grand." He 
finally emerges triumphantly from this mood 
of sadness through the realization that music 
is the most perfect symbol of the evolution of 
spirit, of which the central truth — 

"The inmost care where truth abides in fuhiess'* — 

as Paracelsus expresses it, remains always 
permanent, while the form is ever changing, 
but though ever changing it is of absolute 
value to the time when the spirit found ex- 
pression in it. Furthermore, in any form 
once possessing beauty, by throwing one's 
self into its historical atmosphere the beauty 
may be regained. 

The poem has, of course, a still larger 
significance in relation to all forms of truth 
and beauty of which every age has had its 
living, immortal examples, the "broken 
arcs" which finally will make the perfect 
round, each arc perfect in itseK, and thus the 
poet's final psean is joyous, "Never dream 
that what once lived shall ever die. " 

The prologue of this series of poems pre- 
figures the thought in a striking dialogue 
between Apollo and the Fates wherein the 
Fates symbolize the natural forces of life, 
behind which is Zeus or divine power; Apollo's 
light symbolizes the glamour which hope and 



108 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

aspiration throw over the events of human 
existence, without actually giving any assur- 
ance of its worth, and the wine of Bacchus 
symbohzes feehng, by means of which a 
perception of the absolute is gained. Man's 
reason, guided by the divine, accepts this 
revelation through feeling not as actual knowl- 
edge of the absolute which transcends all intel- 
lectual attempts to grasp it, but as a promise 
suflSciently assuring to take him through the 
ills and uncertainties of life with faith in the 
ultimate triumph of beauty and good. 

The epilogue, a dialogue between John 
Fust and his friends, brings home the thought 
once more in another form, emphasizing the 
fact that there can be no new realm of actual, 
palpable knowledge opened up to man be- 
yond that which his intellect is able to per- 
ceive. Once having gained this knowledge 
of the failure of intellectual knowledge to 
solve what Whitman calls the "strangling 
problems" of life, man's part is to follow 
onward through ignorance. 

"Dare and deserve! 
As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve. 
So approximates Man — Thee, who reachable not. 
Hast formed him to yearningly 

Follow thy whole 
Sole and single omniscience!" 



PROMISE OF PEACE 109 

It will be seen from this review of the 
salient points enlarged upon by Browning in 
these last groups of poems that he has de- 
liberately set himself to harmonize the intel- 
lectual and the intuitional aspects of human 
consciousness. He has sought to join the 
hands of mind and spirit. The artistic exu- 
berance of Paracelsus is supplemented by 
spiritual fervor. To the young Browning, the 
beauty of immortal, joyous life pursuing its 
heights forever was as a radiant vision, to the 
Browning who had grappled with the stran- 
gling problems of the century this beauty was 
not so distinctly seen, but its reality was felt 
with all the depth of an intensely spiritual 
nature — a nature moreover so absolutely 
fearless, that it could unflinchingly confront 
every giant of doubt, or of disillusionment 
which science in its pristine egotism had 
conjured up, saying "Keep to thine own prov- 
ince, where thou art indeed powerful; to the 
threshold of the eternal we may come through 
thy ministrations, but the consciousness of 
divine things cometh through the still small 
voice of the heart. " 

Thus, while he accepted every law relating 
to phenomena which science has been able to 
formulate, he realized the futility of resting 
in a primal, wholly dehumanized energy, that 



no BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

is, something not greater but less than its 
own outcome, humanity. He was incapable 
of any such absurdity as Chfford's dictum 
that "Reason, inteUigence and vohtion are 
properties of a complex which is made up of 
elements, themselves not rational, not intel- 
ligent, not conscious. " Since Clifford's time, 
the marked differences between the proc- 
esses of a psychic being like man, and the 
processes of nature have been so fully recog- 
nized and so carefully defined by psycholo- 
gists that Browning's insistence upon making 
man the center whence truth radiates has had 
full confirmation. 

Theodore Merz has summed up these 
psychological conclusions in regard to the 
characteristics peculiar to man as distin- 
guished from all the rest of the universe in 
the following words: 

** There are two properties with which we are familiar 
through common sense and ordinary reflection as belonging 
especially to the phenomena of our inner self-conscious life, 
and these properties seem to lie quite beyond the sphere and 
the possibilities of the ordinary methods of exact research. 

"As we ascend in the scale of human beings we become 
aware that they exhibit a special kind of unity which cannot 
be defined, a unity which, even when apparently lost in 
periods of unconsciousness, is able to reestablish itself by the 
wonderful and indefinable property called * memory ' — a 
center which can only be very imperfectly localized — a 



PROMISE OF PEACE 111 

together which is more than a mechanical sum; in fact we 
rise to the conception of individuahty, that which cannot be 
divided and put together again out of its parts. 

"The second property is still more remarkable. The world 
of the inner processes which accompany the higher forms of 
nervous development in human beings is capable of un- 
limited growth and it is capable of this by a process of 
becoming external: it becomes external, and, as it were, per- 
petuates itself in language, literature, science and art, legis- 
lation, society, and the like. We have no analogue of this in 
physical nature, where matter and energy are constant 
quantities and where the growth and multiplication of living 
matter is merely a conversion of existing matter and energy 
into special altered forms without increase or decrease in 
quantity. But the quantity of the inner thing is continually 
on the increase; in fact, this increase is the only thing of in- 
terest in the whole world. " 

Thus the modern psychologist and the poet 
who in the early days of the century said the 
soul was the only thing worth study join 
hands. 

The passage already referred to in "Francis 
Furini" preseits most explicitly the objec- 
tive or intellectual method and the subjec- 
tive or intuitional method of the search for 
truth. 

Furini is made to question — 

"Evolutionists! 
At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights, 
Our stations for discovery opposites. 
How should ensue agreement! I explain." 



112 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

He describes, then, how the search of the 
evolutionist for the absolute is outside of man. 
"'Tis the tip-top of things to which you 
strain." Arriving at the spasm which sets 
things going, they are stopped, and since 
having arrived at unconscious energy, they 
can go no further, they now drop down to a 
point where atoms somehow begin to think, 
feel, and know themselves to be, and the 
world's begun such as we recognize it. This is a 
true presentation of the attitude of physicists 
and chemists to-day, the latter especially 
holding that experiment proves that in the 
atoms themselves is an embryonic form of 
consciousness and wiU. From these is finally 
evolved at last self-conscious man. But after 
all this investigating on the part of the 
evolutionist what has been gained .^^ Of power 
— that is, power to create nature or life, or 
even to understand it — man possesses no par- 
ticle, and of knowledge, only just so much as 
to show that it ends in ignorance on every 
side. This is the result of the objective 
search for truth. But begin with man him- 
seH, and there is a fact upon which he can 
take a sure stand, his seK-consciousness — a 
'togetherness," as Merz says, which cannot 
be explained mathematically by the adding 
up of atoms; and furthermore an inborn 




Daviu Sthauss 



PROMISE OF PEACE 113 

certainty that whatever is felt to be within 
had its rise or cause without: "thus blend the 
conscious I, and all things perceived in one 
Effect." Through this subjective perception 
of an all-powerful cause a reflex light is 
thrown back upon all that the investigations 
of the intellect have accomplished. The 
cause is no longer simply blind energy, but 
must itself be possessed of gifts as great 
and still greater than those with which the 
soul of man is endowed. The forces at work 
in nature thus become instinct with wonder 
and beauty, the good and evil of life reveal 
themselves as a means used by absolute 
Power and Love for the perfecting of the soul 
which made to know on and ever must know 

"All to be known at any halting stage 
Of [the] soul's progress, such as earth, where wage 
War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy, 
Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy 
With all that quiets and contents." 

To sum up — our investigations into Brown- 
ing's thought show him to be a type pri- 
marily of the mystic. Mysticism in its most 
pronounced forms regards the emotions of 
the human mind as supreme. The mystic, 
instead of allowing the intellectual faculty 
to lead the way, degrades it to an inferior 



114 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

position and makes it entirely subservient to 
the feelings. In some moods Browning seems 
almost to belong to this pronounced type; 
for example, when he says in ''A Pillar at 
Sebzevar," "Say not that we know, rather 
that we love, therefore we know enough." 

It must be remembered, however, that he 
is not in either class of the supernatural 
mystic, one of which supposes truth to be 
gained by a fixed supernatural channel, the 
other that it is gained by extraordinary 
supernatural means. On the contrary, truth 
comes to Browning in pursuance of a regular 
law or fact of the inward sensibility, which 
may be defined in his case as a mode of 
intuition. His intuition of God, as we have 
seen, is based upon the feeling of love both 
in its human and its abstract aspects. 

But this is not all. Upon the intellectual 
side Browning accepted the conclusions of 
scientific investigation as far as phenomena 
were concerned, and while he denied its worth 
in giving direct knowledge of the Absolute, 
he recognized it as useful because of its very 
failure in strengthening the sense of the exist- 
ence of a power transcending human con- 
ception. "What is our failure here but a 
triumph's evidence of the fulness of the 
days? " And, furthermore, with mystic love 



PROMISE OF PEACE 115 

already in our hearts, all knowledge that the 
scientist may bring us of the phenomena of 
nature and Hfe only adds immeasurably to 
our wonder and awe of the power which has 
brought these things to pass, thus "with 
much more knowledge" comes "always much 
more love." 

Once more, the poet's mysticism is tempered 
by a tinge of idealism. There are several 
passages in his poems, notably one already 
quoted from Furini, which show him to have 
had a perception of God directly through 
his own consciousness by means of what the 
idealist calls the higher reason. His percep- 
tion, for instance, that whatever takes place 
within the consciousness had its rise without 
and that this external origin emanates from 
God is the idealist's way of arriving at the 
absolute. 

Thus we see that into Browning's religious 
conceptions enter the intuitions of the artistic 
consciousness as illustrated in Paracelsus 
where God is the divine artist joying in his 
creations, the intuitions of the intellect which 
finds in the failure of knowledge to probe the 
secrets of the universe the assurance of a 
transcendent power beyond human ken, the 
intuition of the higher reason which affirms 
God is, and the intuitions of the heart which 



116 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

promise that God is love, through whom is 
to come fulfilment of all human aspirations 
toward Beauty, Truth, and Love in immor- 
tality. 

If these are aU points which have been 
emphasized, now by one, now by another, of 
the vast array of thinkers who have crowded 
the past century, there is no one who to my 
knowledge has so completely harmonized the 
various thought tendencies of the age, and 
certainly none who has clothed them in such 
a wealth of imaginative and emotional illus- 
tration. 

In these last poems Browning appears to 
borrow an apt term from Whitman, as the 
''Answerer" of his age. In them he has un- 
questioningly accepted the knowledge which 
science has brought, and, recognizing its rela- 
tive character, has yet interpreted it in such 
a way as to make it subserve the highest 
ideals in ethics, religion, and art. Far from 
reflecting any degeneration in Browning's 
philosophy of life, these poems place on a 
firmer basis than ever thoughts prominent 
in his poetry from the first, while adding to 
these the profounder insight into life which 
life's experiences had brought him. 

The subject matter and form are no less 
remarkable than their thought. The variety 



PROMISE OF PEACE 117 

in both is almost bewildering. ReKgion and 
fable, romance and philosophy, art and science 
all commingled in rich profusion; everything 
in language — talk almost colloquial, dainty 
lyrics full of exquisite emotion, and grand 
passages which present in sweeping images 
now the processes of cosmic evolution, now 
those of spiritual evolution, until it seems as 
if we had indeed been conducted to some 
vast mountain height, whence we can look 
forth upon the century's turbulent seas of 
thought, into which flows many a current 
from the past, while suspended above between 
the sea and sky, like the crucifix in Simons 's 
wonderful symbolic picture of the Middle 
Ages, is the mystical form of divine love and 
joy which Browning has made symbolic of 
the nineteenth century. 



Ill 

POLITICAL TENDENCIES 

IN THE political affairs of his own age and 
country Browning as a poet shows little 
interest. This may at first seem strange, for 
that he was deeply sympathetic with past 
historical movements indicating a growth 
toward democratic ideals in government is 
abundantly proved by his choice and treat- 
ment of historical epochs in which the demo- 
cratic tendencies were peculiarly evident. 
Why then did he not give us dramatic pictures 
of the Victorian era, in which as perhaps in 
no other era of English history the yeast of 
political freedom has been steadily and quietly 
working? 

There were probably several reasons for 
his failure to make himseK felt as an influence 
in the political world of his time. In the 
first place, he was preeminently a dramatic 
poet, and as such his interest was in the 
presentation and analysis of individual char- 
acter as it might work itself out in a given 
historical environment. To deal with con- 
ns 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 119 

temporaries in this analytic manner would be 
a difficult and delicate matter, and, as we see, 
in those instances where he did venture upon 
an analysis of English contemporaries, as in 
the case of Wiseman (Bishop Blougram), 
Carlyle in Bernard de Mandeville and in 
"George Bubb Dodington," the sketch of 
Lord Beaconsfield, he takes care to suppress 
every external circumstance which would lead 
to their identification, and to dwell only upon 
their intellectual or psychic aspects. 

A second reason is that the present is usually 
too near at hand to be used altogether eflfec- 
tively as dramatic material. Contemporary 
conditions of history seem to have an air of 
stateliness owing to the fact that every one 
is familiar with them, not only through talk 
and experience but through newspapers and 
magazines, while their larger, universal mean- 
ings cannot be seen at too close a range. 
If, however, past historical episodes and their 
tendencies can be so presented as to illustrate 
the tendencies of the present, then the needful 
artistic perspective is gained. In this manner, 
with a few minor exceptions. Browning has 
revealed the direction in which his political 
sympathies lay. 

When Browning was born, the first Napo- 
leonic episode was nearing its close. Abso- 



120 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

lutism and militarism had in its lust for power 
and bloodshed slaughtered itself for the time 
being, and once more there was opportunity 
for the people of England to strive for their 
own enfranchisement. 

As a progressive ministry in England did 
not come into power until 1830, the struggles 
of the people were rewarded with little suc- 
cess during many years after the Battle of 
Waterloo. During the childhood and boy- 
hood of Browning the events which from time 
to time marked the determination of the 
downtrodden Englishman to secure a larger 
measure of justice for himself were exciting 
enough to have made a strong impression 
upon the precocious mind of the incipient poet 
even in the seclusion of his father's library at 
Camberwell. 

The artificial prosperity which had buoyed 
up the workman during the war with France 
suddenly collapsed with the advent of peace 
after the Battle of Waterloo. Everything 
seemed to combine to make the affairs of the 
workingman desperate. Public business had 
been blunderingly administered, and while a 
fatuous Cabinet was congratulating the na- 
tion upon the flourishing state of the country, 
trade was actually almost at a standstill, 
and failures in business were the order of the 




Cardinal Wiseman 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 121 

day. To make matters worse, a wet summer 
and early frosts interfered with farming, and 
the result was that laborers and workmen 
could not find employment. A not unusual 
percentage of paupers in any given district 
was four fifths of the whole population. 
Thinking the farmers were to blame for the 
high price of bread, these starving people 
wreaked their vengeance on them by burning 
farm buildings, and machinery, and even 
stacks of corn and hay. 

Instead of giving sympathy to these men in 
their desperate condition, a conservative gov- 
ernment saw in them only rioters, and took the 
most stringent measures against them. They 
were tried by a special commission, and thirty- 
four of them were condemned to death, though 
it is recorded that only five of them were exe- 
cuted. The miners of Cornwall and Wales, the 
lace makers of Nottingham, and the iron work- 
ers of the Black Country, next broke out and 
the smashing of machinery continued. Finally 
there was a meeting of the artisans of London, 
Westminster, and Southwick in Spa Fields, 
Clerkenwall, which had been called by Harry 
Hunt, a man of property and education, who 
was known as a supporter of extreme meas- 
ures, and the leader of the Radicals of that 
day. They met for the legitimate purpose. 



122 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

one would think, of considering the propriety 
of petitioning the Prince Regent and ParHa- 
ment to adopt means of reheving the existing 
distress. One of the speakers, however, a poor 
doctor by the name of Watson, was of a more 
beUigerent disposition. He made an inflam- 
matory speech which ended by his seizing a 
tri-colored flag and marching toward the city 
followed by the turbulent rabble. On their 
way they seized the contents of a gunsmith's 
shop on Snow Hill, murdered a man, and 
finally were met opposite the Mansion House 
by the Lord Mayor, who, assisted by a strong 
body of police, arrested some of the leaders 
and dispersed the rest. The arrested persons 
were brought to trial and indicted for high 
treason by the Attorney General, but the 
jury, evidently thinking the indictment had 
taken too exaggerated a form, acquitted 
Watson, and the others were dismissed. 

The conservative Parliament was, however, 
so alarmed by these proceedings that, instead 
of seeking some way of removing the cause 
of the difficulties, it thought only of making 
restrictions for the protection of the person of 
the Regent, of the more eflFective prevention 
of seditious meetings and of surer punish- 
ment. And what were some of these meas- 
ures.^ Debating societies, lecture halls and 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 123 

reading rooms were shut up. Even lectures 
on medicine, surgery and chemistry were 
prohibited. Though there was a possibihty 
of getting a Hcense to lecture from the magis- 
trate, the law was interpreted in the narrowest 
spirit. 

Parliamentary reform began to be spoken 
of in 1819, when a resolution pledging the 
House of Commons to the consideration of 
the state of representation was rejected by a 
vote of one hundred and fifty-three to fifty- 
eight. This decision stirred up the reform 
spirit, and large meetings in favor of it were 
held. The people attending these meetings 
received military drilling and marched to 
their meetings in orderly processions, a fact 
naturally very disturbing to the government. 
When a great meeting was arranged at Man- 
chester on the 16th of August, troops were 
accordingly sent to Manchester. The cavalry 
was ordered to charge the crowd, and although 
they used the flat side of their swords, the 
charge resulted in the killing of six persons 
and the wounding of some hundreds. The 
clash did not end here, for to offset the 
ministerial approval of the action of the 
magistrates and their decision that the meet- 
ing was illegal, the Common Council of 
London passed a resolution by a large major- 



124 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

ity declaring that the meeting was legal. A 
number of Whig noblemen also were on the 
side of the London Council and made similar 
motions. But the ministers, unmoved by 
these signs of the times, introduced bills in 
Parliament for the repression of disorder and 
the further restraining of public hberty. The 
bills, it is true, were strenuously opposed in 
both houses, but the eloquence expended 
against them was all to no purpose, the bills 
were passed, and reform for the time being 
was nipped in the bud. 

Although after this laws were gradually 
introduced by the ministers which tended 
very much to the betterment of conditions, 
the fire of reform did not burst out again with 
full fury until the time of the Revolution of 
July, in France, which it will be remembered 
was directed against the despotic King Charles 
X, and ended in his being deposed, when his 
crown was given to his distant cousin Louis 
PhiHppe. The success of the French in their 
stand against despotism caused a general 
revolutionary stir in several European coun- 
tries, while in England the spirit of revolution 
showed itseK in incendiary fires from one end 
of the country to the other. 

With Parliament itself full of believers in 
reform, the chief of the Cabinet, the Duke of 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 125 

Wellington, announced that the House of 
Commons did not need reform and that he 
would resist all proposals for a change. So 
great was the popular excitement at this 
announcement that the Duke could not ven- 
ture to go forth to dine at the Guildhall for 
fear that he might be attacked. 

Such were the chief episodes in the forward 
advance of the people up to the time of the 
presentation of the Reform Bill in Parliament. 
This important measure has been described 
as the greatest organic change in the British 
Constitution that had taken place since the 
revolution of 1688. When this bill was finally- 
passed it meant a transference of govern- 
mental control from the upper classes to the 
middle classes, and was the inauguration of a 
policy which has constantly added to the 
prosperity and well-being of the English 
people. The agitation upon this bill, intro- 
duced in the House by Lord John Russell, 
under the Premiership of Earl Grey, and a 
ministry favorable to reform, was filling the 
attention of all Englishmen to the exclusion 
of every other subject just at the time when 
Browning was emerging into manhood, 1831 
and 1832, and though he has not commemo- 
rated in his poetry this great step in the 
poUtical progress of his own century, his first 



126 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

play, written in 1837, takes up a period of 
English history in which a momentous strug- 
gle for liberty on the part of the people was 
in progress. 

Important as the Reform Bill was, it fur- 
nished no such picturesque episodes for a 
dramatist as did the struggle of Pym and 
Strafford under the despotic rule of King 
Charles I. 

In choosing this period for his play the 
poet found not only material which furnished 
to his hand a series of wonderfully dramatic 
situations, but in the three men about whom 
the action moves is presented an individuality 
and a contrast in character full of those 
possibilities for analysis so attractive to 
Browning's mind. 

Another point to be gained by taking this 
remote period of history was that his attitude 
could be supremely that of the philosopher of 
history. He could portray with fairness what- 
ever worth of character he found to admire 
in the leaders upon either side, at the same 
time that he could show which possessed 
the winning principle — the principle of prog- 
ress. In dealing with contemporary events a 
strong personal feeling is sure to gain the 
upper hand, and to be non-partisan and 
therefore truly dramatic is a difficult, if not an 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 127 

impossible, task. When we come to examine 
this play, we find that the character which 
unquestionably interested the poet most was 
StrafiFord's; not because of his political princi- 
ples but because of his devotion to his King. 
Human love and loyalty in whomever mani- 
fested was always of the supremest interest 
to Browning, and, working upon any hints 
furnished by history, the poet has developed 
the character of Strafford in the light of his 
personal friendship for the King — a feeling 
so powerful that no fickle change of mood on 
the part of the King could alter it. Upon 
this fact of his personal relations to the King 
StrafiFord's actions in this great crisis have 
been interpreted and explained, though not 
defended, from the political point of view. 

Some wavering on the part of Pym is also 
explained upon the ground of his friendship 
for and his belief in StrafiFord, but mark the 
diflFerence between the two men. Pym, once 
sure that StrafiFord is not on the side of 
progress, crushes out all personal feehng. He 
allows nothing to stand in the way of his 
political policy. With unflinching purpose he 
proceeds against his former friend, straight 
on to the impeachment for treason, straight 
on, like an inexorable fate, to the prevention 
of his rescue from execution. Browning's 



/ 



ns BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

dramatic imagination is responsible for this 
last climax in which he brings the two men 
face to face. Here, in Pym's strength of will 
to serve England at any cost, mingled with the 
hope of meeting Strafford purged of all his 
errors in a future life, and in Strafford's 
response, "When we meet, Pym, I'd be set 
right — not now! Best die," is foreshadowed 
the ultimate triumph of the parliamentary 
over the monarchical principles of govern- 
ment, and the poet's own sympathy with the 
party of progress is made plain. 

It is interesting in the present connection 
to inquire whether there are any parallels 
between the agitation connected with the 
reform legislation of 1832 and the revolution 
at the time of Charles I which might send 
Browning's mind back to that period. The 
special point about which the battle raged in 
1832 was the representation in Parliament. 
This was so irregular that it was absolutely 
unfair. In many instances large districts or 
towns would have fewer representatives than 
smaller ones, or perhaps none at all. Repre- 
sentation was more a matter of favoritism 
than of justice. The votes in Parliament were, 
therefore, not at all a true measure of the 
attitude of the country. It seems strange 
that so eminently sensible a reform should 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 129 

meet with such determined opposition. As 
usual, those in power feared loss of privilege. 
The House of Lords was the obstruction. 
The bill was in fact a step logically following 
upon the determination of the people of the 
time of Charles I that they would not sub- 
mit to be levied upon for ship-money upon 
the sole authority of the King. They 
demanded that Parliament, which had not 
been assembled for ten years, should meet 
and decide the question. This question was 
not merely one of the war-tax or ship-money, 
but of whether the King should have the 
power to levy taxes upon the people without 
consent of Parliament. 

As every one knows, when the King finally 
consented to the assembling of Parliament, 
in April, 1840, he informed it that there would 
be no discussion of its demands until it had 
granted the war subsidies for which it had 
been asked. The older Vane added to the 
consternation of the assembly by announcing 
that the King would accept nothing less than 
the twelve subsidies which he had demanded 
in his message. In the face of this ultimatum 
the committee broke up without coming to 
a conclusion, postponing further considera- 
tion until the next day, but before they had 
had time to consider the matter the next day 



130 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

the King had decided to dissolve the ParUa- 
ment. 

The King was forced, however, to reassem- 
ble Parhament again in the autumn. In this 
Parliament the people's party gained control, 
and many reforms were instituted. Led by 
such daring men as Pym, Hampden, Crom- 
well, and the younger Vane, resolutions were 
passed censuring the levying of ship-money, 
tonnage and poundage, monopolies, innova- 
tions in religion — in fact, all the grievances 
of the oppressed which had been ignored for 
a decade were brought to light and redressed 
by the House, quite regardless of the King's 
attitude. 

The chief of the abuses which it was bent 
upon remedying was the imposing of taxes 
upon the authority of the King and the per- 
secution of the Puritans. But there was 
another grievance which received the atten- 
tion of the Long Parliament, and which forms 
a close link with the reforms of 1832 — namely, 
the attempt to improve the system of repre- 
sentation in Parliament, an attempt which 
was partially carried into effect by Cromwell 
later. Under Charles II, however, things 
feU back into their old way and gradually 
went on from bad to worse until the tide 
changed, and the people became finally 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 131 

aroused after two hundred years to the need 
of a radical change. The bhndness of the 
Duke of Welhngton, declaring no reform was 
needed, is hardly less to be marveled at than 
that of King Charles declaring he would 
rule without Parliament. The King took the 
ground that the people had no right to repre- 
sentation in the government; the Minister, that 
only some of the people had a right. 

The horrors of revolution followed upon the 
blindness of the one, with its reactionary 
aftermath, while upon the other there was 
violence, it is true, and a revolution was 
feared, but through the wise measures of the 
liberal ministers no subversion of the govern- 
ment occurred. Violence reached such a 
pitch, however, that the castle of Nottingham 
in Derby was burned, the King's brother was 
dragged from his horse, and Lord Londonderry 
roughly treated. The mob at Bristol was so 
infuriated that Sir C. Wetherell, the Recorder 
of the city, who had voted against the bill, 
had to be escorted to the Guildhall by a 
hundred mounted gentlemen. Two men hav- 
ing been arrested, the mob attacked and de- 
stroyed the interior of the Mansion House, 
set fire to the Bishop's palace and to many 
other buildings. There was not only an enor- 
mous loss of property, but loss of life. 



132 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

A quieter demonstration at Birmingham 
carries us back, as it might have carried 
Browning, to the *' great-hearted men" of the 
Long Parhament. A meeting was called 
which was attended by one hundred and 
fifty thousand persons, and resolutions were 
passed to the effect that if the Reform Bill 
were not passed they would refuse to pay 
taxes, as Hampden had refused to pay ship- 
money. 

The final act in this momentous drama was 
initiated with the introduction by Lord John 
Russell of the third Reform Bill in December, 
1831. Again it was defeated in the House of 
Lords, whereupon some of the Cabinet wished 
to ask the King to create a suflScient number 
of new peers to force the bill through the 
House. Earl Grey was not at all in favor of 
this, but at last consented. This course was 
not welcome to the House of Lords, and the 
doubtful members in the House promised that 
if this suggestion were not carried into effect 
they would insure a suflScient majority in the 
House of Lords to carry the bill. This was 
done, but before the Lords went into com- 
mittee a hostile motion postponing the dis- 
franchisement clauses was carried. Then Earl 
Grey asked for the creation of new peers. 
As it would require the creating of about 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 133 

fifty new peers, the King refused, the ministry 
resigned and the Duke of Welhngton came 
into power again. But his power, Hke that 
of Strafford, was broken. He had reached the 
point of recognizing that some reform was 
needed, but he could not persuade his col- 
leagues of this. In the meantime the House 
of Commons passed a resolution of confidence 
in the Grey administration. Such determined 
opposition being shown not only in Parlia- 
ment but by the people in various ways, 
Wellington felt his only course was resignation. 
William IV had, much to his chagrin, to recall 
Grey, but he escaped the necessity of creating 
a large number of peers, by asking the oppo- 
sition in the House of Lords to withdraw 
their resistance to the bill. The Duke of 
Wellington and others thereupon absented 
themselves, and finding further obstruction 
was useless, the Lords at last passed the bill 
and it became law in June, 1832. 

This national crisis through which Brown- 
ing had hved could not fail to have made its 
impression on him. It is certainly an indica- 
tion of the depth of his interest in the growth 
of hberalism that his first Enghsh subject, 
written only a few years subsequent to this 
momentous change in governmental methods, 
should have dealt with a period whose analy- 



134 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

sis and interpretation in dramatic form gave 
him every opportunity for the expression of 
his sympathy with Kberal ideals. Broad- 
minded in his interpretation of Strafford's 
career, in love with his qualities of loyalty, 
and his capabilities of genuine affection for 
the vacillating Charles, he made Strafford 
the hero of his play, but it is Pym whom, 
in his play, he has exalted as the nation's 
hero, and into whose mouth he has put one 
of the greatest and most intensely pa- 
thetic speeches ever uttered by an English- 
man. It is when he confronts Strafford at 
the last: 

"Have I done well? Speak, England! Whose sole sake 
I still have labored for, with disregard 
To my own heart, — for whom my youth was made 
Barren, my manhood waste, to offer up 
Her sacrifice — this friend — this Wentworth here — 
Wlio walked in youth with me, loved me, it may be. 
And whom, for his forsaking England's cause, 
I hunted by all means (trusting that she 
Would sanctify all means) even to the block 
Which waits for him. And saying this, I feel 
No bitterer pang than first I felt, the hour 
I swore that Wentworth might leave us, but I 
Would never leave him: I do leave him now. 
I render up my charge (be witness, God !) 
To England who imposed it. I have done 
Her bidding — poorly, wrongly, — it may be. 
With ill effects — for I am weak, a man : 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 135 

Still, I have done my best, my human best. 

Not faltering for a moment. It is done. 

And this said, if I say . . . yes, I will say 

I never loved but one man — David not 

More Jonathan! Even thus I love him now: 

And look for that chief portion in that world 

Where great hearts led astray are turned again, 

(Soon it may be, and, certes, will be soon : 

My mission over, I shall not live long) — 

Ay, here I know and talk — I dare and must. 

Of England, and her great reward, as all 

I look for there; but in my inmost heart, 

Beheve, I think of stealing quite away 

To walk once more with Wentworth — my youth's friend 

Purged from all error, gloriously renewed. 

And Eliot shall not blame us. Then indeed . . . 

This is no meeting, Wentworth I Tears increase 

Too hot. A thin mist — is it blood .^^ — enwraps 

The face I loved once. Then, the meeting be. " 

At the same time that Browning was writing 
'* StraflFord/' he was also engaged upon "Sor- 
dello." In that he has given expression to 
his democratic philosophy through his con- 
struction and interpretation of Sordello's 
character as a champion of the people as well 
as a poet who ushered in the dawn of the 
Italian literary Renaissance. As he made 
Paracelsus develop from a dependence upon 
knowledge as his sole guide in his philosophy 
of life into a perception of the place emotion 
must hold in any satisfactory theory of life, 



136 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

and put into his mouth a modern conception 
of evolution illmninated by his own artistic 
emotion, so he makes Sordello develop from 
the individuahstic type to the socialist type 
of man, who is bent upon raising the masses 
of the people to higher conditions. The ideal 
of liberal forms of government was even in 
Sordello's time a growing one, sifting into 
Italy from Greek precedents, but Browning's 
Sordello sees something beyond either poht- 
ical or ecclesiastical espousal of the people's 
cause — namely, the espousal of the people's 
cause by the people themselves, the arrival of 
the self-governing democracy, an ideal much 
nearer attainment now than when Browning 
was writing: 

**Two parties take the world up, and allow 
No third, yet have one principle, subsist 
By the same injustice; whoso shall enlist 
With either, ranks with man's inveterate foes. 
So there is one less quarrel to compose 
The Guelf, the Ghibelline may be to curse — 
I have done nothing, but both sides do worse 
Than nothing. Nay, to me, forgotten, reft 
Of insight, lapped by trees and flowers, was left 
The notion of a service — ha? What lured 
Me here, what mighty aim was I assured 
Must move Taurello? What if there remained 
A cause, intact, distinct from these, ordained 
For me its true discoverer? " 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 137 

The mood here portrayed was one which 
might have been fostered in Browning in 
relation to his own time. He doubtless felt 
that neither the progressive movements in 
the state nor those in religion really touched 
upon the true principles of freedom for the 
individual. He might not have defined these 
principles to himself any more definitely than 
as a desire for the greatest happiness of the 
whole number. And even of such an ideal as 
that he had his doubts because of the necessity 
of his mind to find a logical use for evil in the 
world. This he could only do by supposing 
it a divine means for the development of the 
human soul in its sojourn in this life. Speak- 
ing in his own person in "Sordello," he gives 
expression to this doubt in the following 
passage in the third book: 

"I ask youth and strength 
And health for each of you, not more — at length 
Grown wise, who asked at home that the whole race 
Might add the spirit's to the body's grace. 
And all be dizened out as chiefs and bards. 



" ^As good you sought 

To spare me the Piazza's slippery stone 
Or keep me to the unchoked canals alone. 
As hinder Life the evil with the good 
Which make up Living rightly understood. " 



138 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Still, though vague as to what the good 
for the whole people might be, there was no 
vagueness in his mind as to the people's right 
to possess the power to bring about their 
own happiness. Yet given the right princi- 
ples, he would not have the attempt made to 
put them into practice all at once. 

His final attitude toward the problem of 
the best methods for bettering human con- 
ditions in the poem is, strictly speaking, that 
of the opportunist working a step toward his 
ideal rather than that of the revolutionist 
who would gain it by one leap. Sordello 
should realize that 

God has conceded two lights to a man — 
One, of men's whole work, man's first 
Step to the plan's completeness." 

Man's part is to take this first step, leaving 
the ultimate ideal to be worked out, as time 
goes, on by successive men. To reach at one 
bound the ideal would be to regard one's self 
as a god. Some such theory of action as 
this is the one which guides the Fabian 
socialist working in England to-day. Nothing 
is to be done to subvert the present order of 
society, but every opportunity is to be made 
the most of which will tend to the betterment 
of the conditions of the masses, until by 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 139 

degrees the socialist regime will become pos- 
sible. Sordello was too much of the idealist 
to seize the opportimity when it came to him 
of helping the people by means of the Ghibel- 
line power suddenly conferred upon him, and 
so he failed. 

This opportunist doctrine is one especially 
congenial to the English temperament and 
certainly has its practical advantages, if it 
is not so inspiring as the headlong ideahsm 
of a Pym, which just as surely has its disad- 
vantages in the danger that the ideal will be 
ahead of humanity's power of seizing it and 
living it, and will therefore run the risk of 
being overturned by a reaction to the low 
plane of the past; especially does this danger 
become apparent when the way to the attain- 
ment of the ideal is paved with violence. 

While Browning was writing "Sordello," 
the preparation of which included a short 
trip to Italy, the Chartist agitation was going 
on in England. It may well, at that time, 
have been considered to demand an ideal 
beyond possibility of attainment, which was 
proved by its final utter annihilation. The 
workingmen's association led by Mr. Dun- 
combe was responsible for a program in the 
form of a parliamentary petition which asked 
for six things. These were : universal suflFrage, 



140 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

or the right of voting by every male of twenty- 
one years of age; vote by ballot; annual 
Parliaments; abolition of the property quali- 
fication for members of Parliament; members 
of Parhament to be paid for their services; 
equal electoral districts. 

There were two sorts of Chartists, moral- 
force Chartists and physical-force Chartists, 
the latter of whom did as much damage as 
possible in the agitation. 

The combined forces were led by Feargus 
O'Connor, an Irish barrister, who madly 
spent his force and energy for ten years in 
carrying forward the movement, and, at last, 
confronted by disagreement in the ranks of 
the Chartists and the Duke of Wellington and 
his troops, gave it up in despair. He was a 
martyr to the cause, for he took its failure so 
much to heart that he ended his days in a 
lunatic asylum. 

This final failure came many years after 
'^Sordello" was finished, but the poet's con- 
clusions in ^'Sordello" seem almost prophetic 
in the light of the passage in the poem already 
quoted, in which the poet declares himself 
grown wiser than he was at home, where he 
had asked the utmost for all men, and now 
reahzed that this cannot be attained in one 
leap. 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 141 

Agitation about the relations between Eng- 
land and Ireland were also filling public 
attention at this time, but most important 
of all the contemporary movements was the 
League for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. 
The story of the growth and the peaceful 
methods by which it attained its growth is one 
of the most interesting in the annals of 
England's political development. It meant 
the adoption of the great principle of free 
trade, to which England has since adhered. 
For eight years the agitation in regard to it 
was continued, during which great meetings 
were held, thousands of pounds were sub- 
scribed to the cause, and the names of Sir 
Richard Cobden and John Bright became 
famous as leaders in the righteous cause of 
untaxed food for the people. John Bright's 
account of how he became interested in the 
movement and associated himseK with Cob- 
den in the work, told in a speech made at 
Rochdale, gives a vivid picture of the human 
side of the problem which by the conserva- 
tives of the day was treated as a merely 
political issue: 

"In the year 1841 I was at Leamington and spent several 
months there. It was near the middle of September there 
fell upon me one of the heaviest blows that can visit any 
man. I found myself living there with none living of my 



142 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

house but a motherless child. Mr. Cobden called upon me 
the day after that event, so terrible to me and so prostrating. 
He said, after some conversation, 'Don't allow this grief, 
great as it is, to weigh you down too much. There are at 
this moment in liiousands of homes in this country wives and 
children who are dying of hunger — of hunger made by the 
law. If you come along with me, we will never rest till we 
have got rid of the Corn Law.* We saw the colossal injustice 
which cast its shadow over every part of the nation, and we 
thought we saw the true remedy and the relief, and that if 
we united our efforts, as you know we did, with the efforts of 
hundreds and thousands of good men in various parts of the 
country, we should be able to bring that remedy home, and 
to afford that relief to the starving people of this country." 

The movement thus inaugurated was, as 
Molesworth declares, "without parallel in the 
history of the world for the energy with which 
it was conducted, the rapid advance it made, 
and the speedy and complete success that 
crowned its efforts; for the great change it 
wrought in pubhc opinion and the consequent 
legislation of the country; overcoming preju- 
dice and passion, dispelling ignorance and 
conquering powerful interests, with no other 
weapons than those of reason and that elo- 
quence which great truths and strong con- 
viction inspire." 

A signal victory for the League was gained 
in 1843, when the London Times, which up 
to that time^ had regarded the League with 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 143 

suspicion and even alarm, suddenly turned 
round and ranged itself with the advancing 
tide of progress by declaring, "The League 
is a great fact. It would be foolish, nay, 
rash, to deny its importance. It is a great 
fact that there should have been created in 
the homestead of our manufacturers (Man- 
chester) a confederacy devoted to the agitation 
of one political question, persevering at it 
year after year, shrinking from no trouble, 
dismayed at no danger, making light of every 
obstacle. It demonstrates the hardy strength 
of purpose, the indomitable will, by which 
Englishmen working together for a great 
object are armed and animated." 

The final victory, however, did not come 
until three years later, when Sir Robert Peel, 
who became Prime Minister to defend the 
Corn Laws, announced that he had been 
completely convinced of their injustice, and 
that he was an "absolute convert to the 
free-trade principle, and that the introduc- 
tion of the principle into all departments of 
our commercial legislation was, according to 
his intention, to be a mere question of time 
and convenience." This was in January, 
1845, and shortly after, June, 1846, the bill 
for the total repeal of the Corn Laws passed 
the House, 



144 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

How much longer it might have been before 
the opposition was carried is a question if it had 
not been for the failure of the grain crops and 
the widespread potato disease which plunged 
Ireland into a state of famine, and threatened 
the whole country with more or less of disaster. 

Even when this state of affairs became 
apparent in the summer of 1845 there was 
still much delay. The Cabinet met and 
discussed and discussed; still Parhament was 
not assembled; and then it was that the 
Mansion House Rehef Committee of Dublin 
drew up resolutions stating that famine and 
pestilence were approaching throughout the 
land, and impeaching the conduct of the 
Ministry for not opening the ports or calling 
Parliament together. 

But still Peel, already won over, could not 
take his Cabinet with him; he was forced to 
resign. Lord John Russell was called to form 
a ministry, but failed, when Peel was recalled, 
and the day was carried. 

Browning's brief but pertinent allusion to 
this struggle in "The Englishman in Italy" 
shows clearly how strongly his sympathies 
were with the League and how disgusted he 
was with the procrastination of Parliament 
in taking a perfectly obvious step for the 
betterment of the people. 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 145 

"Fortnu, in my England at home, 
Men meet gravely to-day 
And debate, if abolishing Corn laws 
Be righteous and wise 
If 't were proper, Scirocco should vanish 
In black from the skies!" 

An occasional allusion or poem like this 
makes us aware from time to time of Brown- 
ing's constant sympathy with any movement 
which meant good to the masses. Even if 
he had not written near the end of his Ufe 
*'Why I am a Liberal," there could be no 
doubt in any one's mind of his political ideals. 
In "The Lost Leader" is perhaps his strongest 
utterance upon the subject. The fact that 
it was called out by Wordsworth's lapse into 
conservatism after the horrors of the French 
Revolution had brought him and his sans 
culotte brethren, Southey and Coleridge, to 
pause, a fact very possibly freshened in 
Browning's mind by Wordsworth's receiving 
a pension in 1842 and the poet-laureateship 
in 1843, does not affect the force of the 
poem as a personal utterance on the side of 
democracy. Browning, himseK, considered 
the poem far too fierce as a portrayal of 
Wordsworth's case.* He evidently forgot 
Wordsworth, and thought only of a renegade 

*See the author's *' Browning's England. " 



146 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

liberal as he went on with the poem. It was 
written the same year that there occurred the 
last attempt to postpone the passing of the 
Anti-Corn Law Bill, whe*n the intensity of 
feeling on the part of all who beheved in prog- 
ress was at its height, and the bare thought 
of a deserter from Liberal ranks would be 
enough to exasperate any man who had the 
nation's welfare at heart. That Browning's 
feeling at the time reached the point not only 
of exasperation but of utmost scorn for any 
one who was not on the liberal side is shown 
most forcibly in the bitter lines: 

"Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, 
One task more declined, one more footpath untrod. 

One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels. 

One more wrong to man, one more insult to God!'* 

Browning speaks of having thought of 
Wordsworth at an unlucky juncture. 

Whatever the exact episode which called 
forth the poem may have been, we are safe in 
saying that at a time when Disraeli was 
attacking Sir Robert Peel because of his 
honesty in avowing his conversion to free 
trade, and because of his bravery in coming 
out from his party, in breaking up his cabinet 
and regardless of all costs in determining to 
carry the bill or resign, and finally carrying 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 147 

it in the face of the greatest odds — at such 
a time, when a great conservative leader had 
shown himself capable of being won over to 
a great liberal principle; the spectacle of a 
deserter from the cause, and that deserter a 
member of one's own brotherhood of poets, 
would be especially hard to bear. 

One feels a little like asking why did not 
Browning let his enthusiasm carry him for 
once into a contemporary expression of admi- 
ration for Sir Robert Peel? Perhaps the 
tortuous windings of parliamentary proceed- 
ings obscured to a near view the true greatness 
of Peel's action. 

The year of this great change in England's 
policy was the year of Robert Browning's 
marriage and his departure for Italy, where 
he lived for fifteen years. During this time 
and for some years after his return to England 
there is no sign that he was taking any interest 
in the political affairs of his country. Human 
character under romantic conditions in a 
social environment, or the thought problems 
of the age, as we have already seen, occupied 
his attention, and for the subject matter of 
these he more often than not went far afield 
from his native country. 

In ''Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau " is the 
poet's first deliberate portrayal of a person 



148 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of contemporary prominence in the political 
world. The alliance of Napoleon III with 
England brought his policy of government 
into strong contrast with that of the liberal 
leaders in Enghsh politics, a contrast which 
had been emphasized through Lord Pahner- 
ston's sympathy with the coup d'etat. 

The news of the manner in which Louis 
Napoleon had carried out his policy of smash- 
ing the French constitution caused horror 
and consternation in England, and the Queen 
at once gave instructions that nothing should 
be done by her ambassador in Paris which 
could be in any way construed as an inter- 
ference in the internal affairs of France. 
Already, however, Lord Palmerston had ex- 
pressed to the French Minister of Foreign 
Affairs his entire approbation in the act of 
Napoleon and his conviction that he could 
not have acted otherwise than as he had done. 
When this was known, the Prime Minister, 
Lord John Russell, wrote Palmerston a letter, 
causing his resignation, which was accepted 
very willingly by the Queen. The letter was 
as follows: 

"While I concur in the foreign poHcy of which you have 
been the adviser, and much as I admire the energy and abihty 
with which it has been carried into eflFect, I cannot but ob- 
serve that misunderstandings perpetually renewed, violations 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 149 

of prudence and decorum too frequently repeated, have 
marred the effects which ought to have followed from a sound 
policy and able admirers. I am, therefore, most reluctantly 
compelled to come to the conclusion that the conduct of 
foreign affairs can no longer be left in your hands with 
advantage to the country. '* 

When England's fears that Louis Napoleon 
would emulate his illustrious predecessor and 
invade her shores were allayed, her attitude 
was modified. She forgot the horrors of the 
coup d'etat and formed an alliance with him, 
and her hospitable island became his refuge 
in his downfall. 

A prominent figure in European politics 
for many years, Louis Napoleon had just 
that combination of greatness and mediocrity 
which would appeal to Browning's love of a 
human problem. Furthermore, Napoleon was 
brought very directly to the poet's notice 
through his Italian campaign and Mrs. Brown- 
ing's interest in the political crisis in Italy, 
which found expression in her fine group of 
Italian patriotic poems. 

The question has been asked, ''Will the 
unbiased judgment of posterity allow to 
Louis Napoleon some extenuating circum- 
stances, or will it pronounce an unqualified 
condemnation upon the man who, for the 
sake of consolidating his own power and 



150 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

strengthening his corrupt government, spilled 
the blood of no less than a hundred thousand 
Frenchmen?" 

When all Europe was putting to itself 
some such question as this, and answering 
it with varying degrees of leniency, Browning 
conceived the idea of making Napoleon speak 
for himself, and at the same time he added 
what purports to be the sort of criticism of 
him indulged in by a Thiers or a Victor Hugo. 
The interest of the poem centers in Napoleon's 
own vindication of himself as portrayed by 
Browning. What Browning wrote of the 
poem in a letter to a friend in 1872 explains 
fully his aim, as well as showing by indirec- 
tion, at least, how much he was interested in 
political affairs at this time, though so httle 
of this interest crops out in his poetry: "I 
think in the main he meant to do what I 
say, and but for weakness — grown more ap- 
parent in his last years than formerly — 
would have done what I say he did not. 
I thought badly of him at the beginning of 
his career, et four cause; better afterward, on 
the strength of the promises he made and 
gave indications of intending to redeem. I 
think him very weak in the last miserable 
year. At his worst I prefer him to Thiers 's 
best." At another time he wrote: "I am 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 151 

glad you like what the editor of the Edinburgh 
calls my eulogium on the Second Empire, 
which it is not, any more than what another 
wiseacre aJBSrms it to be, 'a scandalous attack 
on the old constant friend of England.' It is 
just what I imagine the man might, if he 
pleased, say for himself." 

Browning depicts the man as perfectly 
conscious of his own limitations. He recog- 
nizes that he is not the genius, nor the creator 
of a new order of things, but that his power 
lies in his faculty of taking an old ideal and 
improving upon it. He contends that in 
following out his special gifts as a conservator 
he is doing just what God intended him to 
do, and as to his method of doing it that is 
his own affair. God gives him the commission 
and leaves it to his human faculties to carry 
it out, not inquiring what these are, but 
simply asking at the end if the commission 
has been accomplished. 

Once admit these two things — namely, 
that his nature, though not of the highest, is 
such as God gave him, and his lack of respon- 
sibility in regard to any moral ideal, so that 
he accomplishes the purpose of this nature — 
and a loophole is given for any inconsistencies 
he may choose to indulge in in bringing 
about that strengthening of an old ideal in 



152 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

which he beheves. The old ideal is, of course, 
the monarchical principle of government, ad- 
ministered, however, in such a manner that 
it will be for the good of society in all its 
complex manifestations of to-day. His notion 
of society's good consists in a balancing of 
all its forces, secured by the smoothing down of 
any extreme tendencies, each having its orbit 
marked but no more, so that none shall im- 
pede the other's path. 

** In this wide world — though each and all alike. 
Save for [him] fain would spread itself through space 
And leave its fellow not an inch of way. '* 

Browning makes him indulge in a curiously 
sophisticated view of the relativity of good 
and evil in the course of his argument, to the 
effect that since there is a further good con- 
ceivable beyond the utmost earth can realize, 
therefore to change the agency — the evil 
whereby good is brought about, try to make 
good do good as evil does — would be just as 
foolish as if a chemist wanting white and 
knowing that black ingredients were needed 
to make the dye insisted these should be white, 
too. A bad world is that which he experi- 
ences and approves. A good world he does 
not want in which there would be no pity, 
courage, hope, fear, sorrow, joy — devoted- 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 153 

iiess, in short — which he beUeves form the 
ultimate allowed to man; therefore it has been 
his policy not to do away with the evil in the 
society he is saving. To mitigate, not to 
cure, has been his aim. 

Browning would, himself, answer the soph- 
istry, here, by showing that evil though 
permitted by divine power was only a means 
of good through man's working against what- 
ever he conceives to be evil with the whole 
strength of his being. To deliberately follow 
the policy of conserving evil would be in the 
end to annihilate the good. Prince Hohenstiel- 
Schwangau could not see so far as this. 

It is not astonishing that with such a policy 
as this his methods of carrying it out might 
seem somewhat dubious if not positively 
criminal. His departure from his early ideal- 
ism is excused for the reason that idealism 
is not practicable when the region of talk is 
left for the real action of life. Every step in 
his own aggrandizement is apologized for on 
the ground that what needed to be accom- 
plished could only be done by a strong hand 
and that strong hand his own. He was in 
fact an unprincipled utilitarian as Browning 
presents him, who spoiled even what virtue 
resides in utilitarianism by letting his care 
for saving society be too much influenced 



154 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

by his desire for personal glory. One ideal 
undertaking he permitted himself, the freeing 
of Italy from the Austrian yoke. But he was 
not strong enough for any such high flight 
of idealism, as the sequel proved. 

Browning does not bring out in the poem 
the Emperor's real reasons for stopping short 
in the Italian campaign, which certainly were 
sufficient from a practical standpoint, but as 
Archibald Forbes says in his " Life of Napo- 
leon," should have been thought of before 
he published his program of freedom to Italy 
" from the Alps to the Adriatic." " Even when 
he addressed the Italians at Milan," continues 
Forbes, "the new light had not broken in 
upon him which revealed the strength of the 
quadrilateral, the cost of expelling the Aus- 
trians from Venetia, and the conviction that 
further French successes would certainly bring 
mobilized Germany into the field. That new 
light seems to have flashed upon Napoleon 
for the first time from the stern Austrian 
ranks on the day of Solferino. It was then 
he realized that should he go forward he 
would be obliged to attack in front an enemy 
entrenched behind great fortresses, and pro- 
tected against any diversion on his flanks by 
the neutrality of the territories surrounding 
him." 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 155 

Mrs. Browning, whose consternation and 
grief over Villafranca broke out in burning 
verse, yet made a defence of Napoleon's action 
here which might have been worked into 
Browning's poem with advantage. She wrote 
to John Foster that while Napoleon's inter- 
vention in Italy overwhelmed her with joy 
it did not dazzle her into doubts as to the 
motive of it, "but satisfied a patient expecta- 
tion and fulfilled a logical inference. Thus 
it did not present itself to my mind as a caprice 
of power, to be followed perhaps by an 
onslaught on Belgium and an invasion of 
England. Have we not watched for a year 
while every saddle of iniquity has been tried 
on the Napoleonic back, and nothing fitted? 
Wasn't he to crush Piedmontese institutions 
like so many eggshells .^^ Was he ever going 
away with his army, and hadn't he occupied 
houses in Genoa with an intention of bom- 
barding the city? Didn't he keep troops in 
the north after Villafranca on purpose to 
come down on us with a grand duke or a 
Kingdom of Etruria and Plon-Plon to rule 
it? And wouldn't he give back Bologna to 
the Pope? . . . Were not Cipriani, Farini 
and other patriots his 'mere creatures' in 
treacherous correspondence with the Tuileries 
' doing his dirty work ' ? " Of such accusations 



156 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

as these the inteUigent EngUsh journals were 
full, but she maintains that against "The 
Inane and Immense Absurd" from which they 
were born is to be set "a nation saved." 
She realized also how hard Napoleon's posi- 
tion in France must be to maintain "forty 
thousand priests with bishops of the color of 
Monseigneur d' Orleans and company, having, 
of course, a certain hold on the agricultural 
population which forms so large a part of the 
basis of the imperial throne. Then add to 
that the parties who use this Italian question 
as a weapon simply." 

Many of Napoleon's own statements have 
furnished Browning with the arguments used 
in the apology. After deliberately destroying 
the constitution, for example, and himself be- 
ing the cause of the violence and bloodshed 
in Paris, he coolly addressed the people in the 
following strain, in which we certainly recog- 
nize Hohenstiel-Schwangau: 

"Frenchmen! the disturbances are appeased. 
Whatever may be the decision of the people, 
society is saved. The first part of my task 
is accomplished. The appeal to the nation, 
for the purpose of terminating the struggle 
of parties, I knew would not cause any serious 
risk to the public tranquillity. Why should 
the people have risen against me.^^ If I do 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 157 

not any longer possess your confidence — if 
your ideas are changed — there is no occasion 
to make precious blood flow; it will be suffi- 
cient to place an adverse vote in the urn. 
I shall always respect the decision of the 
people." 

His cleverness in combining the idea of 
authority with that of the idea of obeying 
the will of the people is curiously illustrated 
in his speech at the close of his dictatorship, 
during which it must be confessed that he 
had done excellently well for the country — 
so well, indeed, that even the socialists were 
ready to cry " Vive VEmpereur! " 

"While watching me reestabhsh the institutions and 
reawaken the memories of the Empire, people have repeated 
again and again that I wished to reconstitute the Empire 
itself. If this had been so the transformation would have 
been accomplished long ago; neither the means nor the 
opportunities would have been lacking. . . . But I 
have remained content with that I had. Resolved now, as 
heretofore, to do all in my power for France and nothing for 
myself, I would accept any modification of the present 
state of things only if forced by necessity. ... If parties 
remain quiet, nothing shall be changed. But if they endeavor 
to sap the foundations of my government; if they deny the 
legitimacy of the result of the popular vote; if, in short, they 
continually put the future of the country in jeopardy, then, 
but only then, it might be prudent to ask the people for a new 
title which would irrevocably fix on my head the power with 
which they have already clothed me. But let us not antici- 



158 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

pate difficulties; let us preserve the Republic. Under its 
banner I am anxious to inaugurate once more an epoch of 
reconciliation and pardon; and I call on all without dis- 
tinction who will frankly cooperate with me for the public 
good." 

In contrast to such fair-sounding phrases 
Napoleon was capable of the most dishon- 
orable tactics in order to gain his ends. Wit- 
ness the episode of his tempting Bismarck 
with oflFers of an alliance against Austria at 
the same time that he was treating secretly 
with Francis Joseph for the cession of Venetia 
in return for Silesia. And while negotiating 
secretly and separately with these two sworn 
enemies, he pretended to be so disinterested 
as to suggest the submission of their quarrel 
to a European congress. 

Browning has certainly presented a good 
portrait of the man as the history of his own 
utterances contrasted with the history of his 
actions proves. In trying to bridge with 
this apology the discrepancies between the 
two he has, however, attributed to Louis 
Napoleon a degree of self-consciousness be- 
yond any ever evinced by him. The principle 
of imperialism was a conviction with him. 
That he desired to help the people of France 
and to a great extent succeeded, is true; that 
he combined with this desire the desire of 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 159 

power for himself is true; that he used unscru- 
pulous means to gain whatever end he desired 
when such were necessary is true; but that he 
was conscious of his own despicable traits to 
the extent that the poet makes him conscious 
of them is most unlikely. Nor is it likely that 
he would defend himseK upon any such 
subtle ground as that his character and tem- 
perament being the gift of God he was 
bound to follow out his nature in order that 
God's purposes might be accomplished. It is 
rather an explanation of his life from the 
philosopher's or psychologist's standpoint than 
a self-conscious revelation. It is none the 
less interesting on this account, while the 
scene setting gives it a thoroughly human and 
dramatic touch. 

Whatever may be said of Napoleon himself, 
his rule was fraught with consequences of 
import for the whole of Europe, not because 
of what he was, but because of what he was 
not. He was an object lesson on the fallacy 
of trying to govern so that all parties will be 
pleased by autocratically keeping each one 
from fully expressing itself. The result is that 
each grows more aware of the suppression 
than of the amount of freedom allowed to it, 
and nobody is pleased. When added to such 
a policy as this is the surmounting desire for 



160 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

power and the Machiavellian determination 
to attain it by any means, fair or foul, a 
principle of statecraft which by the middle 
of the century could not be practised in its 
most acute form without arousing the most 
severe criticism, his power carried within it 
the seeds of destruction. 

It has been said that "never in the history 
of the world has one man undertaken a task 
more utterly beyond the power of mortal man 
than that which Louis Napoleon was pledged 
to carry through." He professed to be at one 
and the same time the elect sovereign of the 
people, a son of the revolution, a champion 
of universal suffrage, and an adversary of 
the demagogues. In the first of these char- 
acters he was bound to justify his elevation 
by economic and social reforms, in his 
second character he had to destroy the last 
trace of political Uberty. He had, in fact, 
assumed various utterly incompatible atti- 
tudes, and the day that the masses found 
themselves deceived in their expectations, and 
the middle classes found their interests were 
betrayed, reaction was inevitable. 

In spite of his heinous faults, however, 
historians have grown more and more incUned 
to admit that Napoleon filled for a time a 
necessary niche in the line of progress, just 




William Ewart Gladstone 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES , 161 

that step which Browning makes him say the 
genius will recognize that he fills — namely, to 

"Carry the incompleteness on a stage. 
Make what was crooked straight, and roughness smooth. 
And weakness strong: wherein if I succeed. 
It will not prove the worst achievement, sure 
In the eyes at least of one man, one I look 
Nowise to catch in critic company: 
To-wit, the man inspired, the genius, self 
Destined to come and change things thoroughly. 
He, at least, finds his business simplified. 
Distinguishes the done from undone, reads 
Plainly what meant and did not mean this time 
We live in, and I work on, and transmit 
To such successor: he will operate 
On good hard substance, not mere shade and shine.'* 

That is, at a time when Europe was seething 
with the idea of a new order, in which the 
ideal of nationality was to take the place of 
such decaying ideas as the divine right of 
kings, balance of power, and so on. Napoleon 
held on to these ideas just long enough to 
prevent a general disintegration of society. 
He held in his hands the balance of power 
until the nations began to find themselves, and 
in the case of Italy actually helped on the 
triumph of the new order. 

It is interesting to note in this connection 
that one of the principal factors in the making 
of Gladstone into the stanch liberal which 



\ 



162 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

he became was the freeing of Italy, in which 
Napoleon had so large a share. Gladstone 
himself wrote in 1892 of the events which 
occurred in the fifth decade: "Of the various 
and important incidents which associated me 
almost unawares with foreign affairs . . . 
I will only say that they all contributed to 
forward the action of those home causes more 
continuous in their operation, which, without 
in any way effacing my old sense of reverence 
for the past, determined for me my place in 
the present and my direction toward the 
future." In 1859 Gladstone dined with Cavour 
at Turin, when the latter had the oppor- 
tunity of explaining his position and policy 
to the man whom he considered "one of the 
sincerest and most important friends that 
Italy had." But as his biographer says, Glad- 
stone was still far from the glorified democracy 
of the Mazzinian propaganda, and expressed 
his opinion that England should take the 
stand that she would be glad if Italian unity 
proved feasible, "but the conditions of it must 
be gradually matured by a course of improve- 
ment in the several states, and by the political 
education of the people; if it cannot be reached 
by these means, it hardly will by any others; 
and certainly not by opinions which closely 
link Italian reconstruction with European dis- 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 163 

organization and general war." Yet he was 
as distressed as Mrs. Browning at the peace of 
Villafranca, about which he wrote: "I httle 
thought to have hved to see the day when the 
conclusion of a peace should in my own mind 
cause disgust rather than impart relief." By 
the end of the year he thought better of 
Napoleon and expressed himself again some- 
what in the same strain as Mrs. Browning, 
to the eJBEect that the Emperor had shown, 
"though partial and inconsistent, indications 
of a genuine feeling for the Italians — and 
far beyond this he has committed himself 
very considerably to the Italian cause in the 
face of the world. When in reply to all 
that, we fling in his face the truce of Villa- 
franca, he may reply — and the answer is 
not without force — that he stood single- 
handed in a cause when any moment Europe 
might have stood combined against him. 
We gave him verbal sympathy and encourage- 
ment, or at least criticism; no one else gave 
him anything at all. No doubt he showed 
then that he had undertaken a work to which 
his powers were unequal; but I do not think 
that, when fairly judged, he can be said to 
have given proof by that measure of insin- 
cerity or indifference." 

Gladstone's gradual and forceful emancipa- 



164 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

tion into the ranks of the liberals may be 
followed in the fascinating pages of Morley's 
'*Life," who at the end declares that his 
performances in the sphere of active govern- 
ment were beyond comparison. Gladstone's 
own summary of his career gives a glimpse 
of what these performances were as well as 
an interpretation of the century and Eng- 
land's future growth which indicate that 
had he had another twenty years in which to 
progress, perhaps fewer, he would beyond all 
doubt have become an out and out social 
democrat. 

"The public aspect of the period which closes for me with 
the fourteen years (so I love to reckon them) of my formal 
connection with Midlothian is too important to pass with- 
out a word. I consider it as beginning with the Reform 
Act of Lord Grey's government. That great act was for 
England, improvement and extension: for Scotland it was 
political birth, the beginning of a duty and a power, neither of 
which had attached to the Scottish nation in the preceding 
period. I rejoice to think how the solemnity of that duty 
has been recognized, and how that power has been used. 
The threescore years offer as the pictures of what the 
historian will recognize as a great legislative and adminis- 
trative period — perhaps, on the whole, the greatest in our 
annals. It has been predominantly a history of emanci- 
pation — that is, of enabling man to do his work of eman- 
cipation, poHtical, economical, social, moral, intellectual. 
Not numerous merely, but almost numberless, have been 
the causes* brought to issue, and in every one of them I rejoice 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 165 

to think that, so far as my knowledge goes, Scotland has done 
battle for the right. 

"Another period has opened and is opening still — a 
period possibly of yet greater moral dangers, certainly a great 
ordeal for those classes which are now becoming largely 
conscious of power, and never heretofore subject to its 
deteriorating influences. These have been conjSned in their 
actions to the classes above them, because they were its sole 
possessors. Now is the time for the true friend of his coun- 
try to remind the masses that their present political ele- 
vation is owing to no principles less broad and noble than 
these — the love of liberty, of liberty for all without dis- 
tinction of class, creed or country, and the resolute preferenee of 
the interests of the whole to any interest, be it whait it may, of 
a narrower scope." 

Mr. Gladstone entered Parliament at 
twenty-three, in 1832, and a year later Brown- 
ing, at twenty-one, printed his first poem, 
"Pauline." The careers of the two men ran 
nearly parallel, for Browning died in 1889, on 
the day of the publication of his last volume 
of poems, and Gladstone's retirement from 
active life took place in 1894, shortly after 
the defeat of his second Home Rule Bill. 
Though there is nothing to show that these 
two men came into touch with each other 
during their life, and while it is probable that 
Browning would not have been in sympathy 
with many of the aspects of Gladstone's 
mentality, there is an undercurrent of simi- 



166 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

larity in their attitude of mind toward reform. 
The passage in "Sordello" already referred 
to, written in 1840, might be regarded almost 
as a prophecy of the sort of leader Gladstone 
became. I have said of that passage that it 
expressed the ideal of the opportunist, not 
that of the revolutionary. Opportunist Mr. 
Gladstone was often called by captious critics, 
but any unbiased reader following his career 
now as a whole will see, as Morley points out, 
that whenever there was a chance of getting 
anything done it was generally found that he 
was the only man with courage and resolution 
enough to attempt it. 

A distinction should be made between that 
sort of opportunism which waits upon the 
growth of conditions favorable to the taking 
of a short step in amehoration, and what might 
be called militant opportunism, which, at all 
times, seizes every opportunity to take a 
step in the direction of an evolving, all- 
absorbing ideal. Is not this the opportunism 
of both a Browning and a Gladstone? Such 
a poUcy at least tacitly acknowledges that the 
law of evolution is the law that should be 
followed, and that the mass of the people as 
well as the leader have their share in the 
unfolding of the coming ideal, though their 
part in it may be less conscious than his and 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 167 

though they may need his leadership to make 
the steps by the way clear. 

The other political leader of the Victorian 
era with whom Gladstone came most con- 
stantly into conflict was Disraeli, of whom 
Browning in "George Bubb Dodington" has 
given a sketch in order to draw a contrast 
between the unsuccessful policy of a charlatan 
of the Dodington type and that of one like 
Disraeli. The skeptical multitude of to-day 
cannot be taken in by declarations that the 
politician is working only for their good, and 
if he frankly acknowledged that he is working 
also for his own good they would have none 
of him. The nice point to be decided is how 
shall he work for his own good and yet gain 
control of the multitude. Dodington did not 
know the secret, but according to Brown- 
ing Disraeli did, and what is the secret? It 
seems to be an attitude of absolute self- 
assurance, a disregard of consistency, a scorn 
of the people he is dealing with, and a pose 
suggesting the play of supernatiu:al forces in 
his life. 

This is a true enough picture of the real 
Disraeli, who seems to have had a leaning 
toward a belief in spiritualism, and who was 
notorious for his unblushing changes of opin- 
ion and for a style of oratory in which his 



168 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

points were made by clever invective and 
sarcasm hurled at his opponents instead of by 
any sound, logical argument, it being, indeed 
one of his brilliant discoveries that "wisdom 
ought to be concealed under folly, and con- 
sistency under caprice." 

Many choice bits of history might be given 
in illustration of Browning's portrayal of 
him; for example, speaking against reform, 
he exclaims: *' Behold the late Prime Minister 
and the Reform Ministry! The spirited and 
snow-white steeds have gradually changed 
into an equal number of sullen and obstinate 
donkeys, while Mr. Merryman, who, like 
the Lord Chancellor, was once the very life 
of the ring, now Ues his despairing length in 
the middle of the stage, with his jokes ex- 
hausted and his bottle empty." 

As a specimen of his quickness in retort 
may be cited an account of an episode which 
occurred at the time when he came out as 
the champion of the Taunton Blues. In the 
course of his speech he "enunciated," says an 
anonymous writer of the fifties, "one of those 
daring historical paradoxes which are so sig- 
nally characteristic of the man: 'Twenty 
years ago' said the Taunton Blue hero, 
* tithes were paid in Ireland more regularly 
than now!' 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 169 

"Even his supporters appeared astounded 
by this declaration. 

*''How do you know?' shouted an elector. 

*"I have read it,' replied Mr. Disraeh. 

"*0h, oh!' exclaimed the elector. 

"'I know it,' retorted Disraeli, 'because I 
have read, and you' (looking daggers at his 
questioner) 'have not.' 

"This was considered a very happy re- 
joinder by the friends of the candidate, and 
was loudly cheered by the Blues. 

"'Didn't you write a novel.'^' again asked 
the importunate elector, not very much 
frightened even by Mr. Disraeli's oratorical 
thunder and the sardonical expression on his 
face. 

"'I have certainly written a novel,' Mr. 
Disraeli replied; 'but I hope there is no 
disgrace in being connected with literature.' 

'"You are a curiosity of literature, you are,' 
said the humorous elector. 

"'I hope,' said Mr. Disraeli, with great 
indignation, 'there is no disgrace in having 
written that which has been read by hundreds 
of thousands of my fellow-countrymen, and 
which has been translated into every European 
language. I trust that one who is an author 
by the gift of nature may be as good a man 
as one who is Master of the Mint by the gift 



170 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of Lord Melbourne.' Great applause then 
burst forth from the Blues. Mr. Disraeli 
continued, 'I am not, however, the puppet 
of the Duke of Buckingham, as one newspaper 
has described me; while a fellow laborer in 
the same vineyard designated me the next 
morning, "the Marleybone Radical." If there 
is anything on which I figure myseK it is 
my consistency.' 

"'Oh, oh!' exclaimed many hearers. 

"'I am prepared to prove it,' said Mr. 
Disraeli, with menacing energy. 'I am pre- 
pared to prove it, and always shall be, either 
in the House of Commons or on the hustings, 
considering the satisfactory manner in which 
I have been attacked, but I do not think the 
attack will be repeated.'" 

It seems extraordinary that such tactics of 
bluff could take a man onward to the supreme 
place of Prime Minister. Possibly it was just 
as much owing to his power to amuse as to 
any of the causes brought out by Browning. 
Is there anything the majority of mankind 
loves more than a laugh? 

The conflicts of Disraeli and Gladstone 
form one of the most remarkable episodes of 
nineteenth-century politics. One is tempted 
to draw a parallel between Napoleon III and 
Disraeli, whose tactics were much the same, 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 171 

except that Disraeli was backed up by a 
much keener intellect. Possibly he held a 
part in English pohtics similar to that held 
by Napoleon in European politics — that is, 
he conserved the influences of the past long 
enough to make the future more sure of itself. 
Browning, however, evidently considered him 
nothing more than a successful charlatan. 

When Browning wrote, *'Why I Am a 
Liberal," in 1885, liberalism in English pohtics 
had reached its climax in the nineteenth 
century through the introduction by Mr. 
Gladstone, then Premier for the third time, 
of his Home Rule Bill. The injustices suf- 
fered by the Irish people and the horrible 
atrocities resulting from these had had their 
effect upon Mr. Gladstone and had taken 
him the last great step in his progress toward 
freedom. The meeting at which this bill was 
introduced has been described as the greatest 
legislative assembly of modern times. The 
House was full to overflowing, and in a bril- 
liant speech of nearly four hours the veteran 
leader held his audience breathless as he 
unfolded his plans for the betterment of Irish 
conditions. We are told that during the 
debates that followed there was a remarkable 
exhibition of feeling — "the passions, the 
enthusiasm, the fear, and hope, and fury and 



172 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

exultation, sweeping, now the surface, now 
stirring to its depths the great gathering." 
The bill, which included, besides the founding 
of an Irish Parliament in Dublin, which would 
have the power to deal with all matters 
"save the Crown, the Army and Navy, 
Foreign and Colonial Policy, Trade, Naviga- 
tion, Currency, Imperial Taxation, and the 
Endowment of Churches," also provided that 
Ireland should annually contribute to the 
English exchequer the sum of £3,243,000. 

Eloquence, enthusiasm, exultation — all 
came to naught. The bill did not even suit 
the liberals, the bargain from a financial 
point of view being regarded as hard. It was 
defeated in ParUament and fared no better 
when an appeal was made to the country, 
and Mr. Gladstone resigned. In nine months, 
however, a general election returned him to 
office again, and again he introduced a Home 
Rule Bill, and though it passed the Commons, 
it was overwhelmingly defeated in the House 
of Lords. 

It is pleasant to reflect that in this last act 
of a noble and brilliant career spent in the 
interests of the ever-growing ideals of democ- 
racy Gladstone had the sympathy of Brown- 
ing, shown by his emphatic expression of 
"liberal sentiments" at a momentous crisis, f 



POLITICAL TENDENCIES 173 

when a speech on the Hberal side even from 
the mouth of a poet counted for much. 

As we have seen, the reflections in Brown- 
ing's poetry of his interest in pubhc affairs 
are comparatively few, yet such ghmpses as he 
has given prove him, beyond all doubt, to have 
been a democrat in principle, to have arrived, 
in fact, at the beginning of his career at a 
point beyond that attained by England's 
rulers at the end of the century. This far- 
sighted vision of his may have been another 
reason to be added to those mentioned at 
the beginning of the chapter why his interest 
in the practical affairs of his country did not 
more often express itself. The wrangling, the 
inconsequentialness, the eloquence expended 
upon mere personal interests which make up 
by far the larger proportion of all political 
agitation, are irritating to the last degree to a 
man of vision. His part was that of the 
philosopher and artist — to watch and to 
record in the portrayal of his many characters 
the underlying principle of freedom, which 
was the guiding star in all his work. 



IV 



SOCIAL IDEALS 



BROWNING'S social ideals revolve about 
a trinity of values: the value of love, 
the value of truth, the value of evil. His 
ethics are the natural outgrowth of his mysti- 
cism and his idealism, with no touch of the 
utihtarianism which has been a distinctive 
mark of the fabric of English society during 
the nineteenth century, nor, on the other 
hand, of the hidebound conventionalism 
which has Hmited personal freedom in ways 
detrimental to just those aspects of social 
morality it was most anxious to preserve. 

The fact of which Browning seemed more 
conscious than of any other fact of his ex- 
istence, and which, as we have seen, was the 
very core of his mysticism, was feeling. 
Things about which an ordinary man would 
feel no emotion at all start in his mind a train 
of thoughts, ending only in the perception of 
divine love. The eating of a palatable fig 
fills his heart with such gratefulness to the 
giver of the fig that immediately he fares 

174 



.^gpr 



SOCIAL IDEALS 175 

forth upon the way which brings him into 
the presence of the Prime Giver from whom 
all gifts are received. What ecstasy of feehng 
in the artist aspiring through his art to the 
higher regions of Absolute Beauty in ''Abt 
Vogler" of the poet who loves, aspiring to the 
divine through his human love in the epi- 
logue to ''Ferishtah's Fancies!" The per- 
ception of feeling was so intense that it be- 
came in him exalted and concentrated, in- 
capable of dissipating itself in ephemeral 
sentimentalities, and this it is which gives 
feeling to Browning its mystical quality, and 
puts personal love upon the plane of a veri- 
table revelation. 

Though reports have often floated about in 
regard to his attachments to other women after 
Mrs. Browning's death, the fact remains that 
he did not marry again, that he wrote the 
lyrics in '*Ferish tab's Fancies," and the 
sonnet to Edward Fitzgerald just before his 
death, and thirty years after his wife's death. 
Moreover, in the epilogue to ^'The Two Poets 
of Croisic" he gives a hint of what might be 
his attitude toward any other women who 
may have come into his life, in the application 
of the tale of the cricket chirping "love" in 
the place of the broken string of a poet's 
lyre— 



176 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

"For as victory was nighest, 

While I sang and played, 
With my lyre at lowest, highest. 

Right alike — one string that made 

Love sound soft was snapt in twain. 

Never to be heard again, 

**Had not a kind cricket fluttered. 

Perched upon the place 
Vacant left, and duly uttered, 

*Love, Love, Love,' when'er the bass 

Asked the treble to atone 

For its somewhat sombre drone. " 

These rare qualities of constancy, exalta- 
tion and aspiration, in love sublimating it 
into a spiritual emotion, which was evidently 
the distinctive mark of Browning's person- 
ahty on the emotional side, furnishes the key- 
note by which his presentation or solution 
of the social problems involved in the rela- 
tions of men and women is always to be 
gauged. 

He had been writing ten years when he 
essayed his first serious presentation of what 
we might to-day call a problem play on an 
EngUsh subject in "A Blot in the 'Scutch- 
eon.'* In all of his long poems and in 
many of his short ones personal love had 
been portrayed under various conditions — 
between friends or lovers, husband and wife, 



SOCIAL IDEALS 177 

or father and son, and in every instance it is 
a dominating influence in the action, as we 
have already seen it to be in "Strafford." 
Again, in ** King Victor and King Charles" the 
action centers upon Charles's love for his 
father, and is also moulded in many ways 
by Polyxena's love for her husband, Charles. 

But a perception of the possible heights to 
be obtained by the passion of romantic love 
only fully emerges in "Pippa Passes," for ex- 
ample in Ottima's vision of the reality of her 
own love, despite her great sin as contrasted 
with that of Sebald's, and in Jules's rising above 
the conventionally low when he discovers he 
has been duped, and perceiving in Phene a 
purity of soul which no earthly conditions 
had been able to sully, 

"Who, what is Lutwyche, what NataHa*s friends. 
What the whole world except our love — my own. 
Own Phene? . . . 
I do but break these paltry models up 
To begin art afresh . , . 
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas! 
Like a god going through the world there stands 
One mountain for a moment in the dusk, 
Whole brotherhoods of cedars on its brow: 
And you are ever by me while I gaze 
— Are in my arms as now — as now — as now! 
Some unsuspected isle in the far seas ! 
Some unsuspected isle in far-off seas!" 



178 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Again, in *'The Return of the Druses" 
there is a compHcated clash between the 
ideal of religious reverence for the incarna- 
tion of divinity in Djabal and human love 
for him in the soul of Anael, resulting at the 
end in the destruction of the idea of DjabaFs 
supernatural divinity, and his reinstate- 
ment perceived by Anael as divine through 
the complete exaltation of his human love 
for Anael. 

These examples, however, while they illus- 
trate Browning's attitude toward human 
love, are far enough removed from nineteenth- 
century conditions in England. In '*Pippa," 
the social conditions of nineteenth-century 
Italy are reflected; in "The Druses," the 
religious conditions of the Druse nation in the 
fifteenth century. 

In the "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" a situation 
is developed which comes home forcibly to 
the nineteenth-century Englishman despite 
the fact that the scene is supposed to be laid 
in the eighteenth century. The poet's treat- 
ment of the clash between the ideal, cherished 
by an old and honored aristocratic family of 
its own immaculate purity, and the spon- 
taneous, complete and exalted love of the 
two young people who in their ecstasy tran- 
scend conventions, illustrates, as perhaps no 



SOCIAL IDEALS 179 

other situation could, his reverential attitude 
upon the subject of love. Gwendolen, the 
older, intuitional woman, and Mertoun, the 
young lover, are the only people in the play 
to realize that purity may exist although the 
social enactments upon which it is supposed to 
depend have not been complied with. Tres- 
ham learns it only when he has wounded 
Mertoun unto death; Mildred never learns 
it. The grip of conventional teaching has 
sunk so deeply into her nature that she feels 
her sin unpardonable and only to be atoned 
for by death. Mertoun, as he dies, gives 
expression to the essential purity and truth of 
his nature in these words: 

**Die along with me, 
Dear Mildred! *tis so easy, and you'll 'scape 
So much unkindness ! Can I lie at rest. 
With rude speech spoken to you, ruder deeds 
Done to you? — heartless men shall have my heart 
And I tied down with grave-clothes and the worm. 
Aware, perhaps, of every blow — O God! — 
Upon those hps — yet of no power to bear 
The felon stripe by stripe! Die Mildred! Leave 
Their honorable world to them! For God 
We're good enough, though the world casts us out." 

This is only one of many instances which 
go to show that Browning's conception of 
love might include, on the one hand, a com- 



180 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

plete freedom from the trammels imposed 
upon it by conventional codes of morality, 
but on the other, was so real and permanent 
a sympathy between two souls, and so ab- 
solute a revelation of divine beauty, that its 
moraUty far transcended that of the con- 
ventional codes, which under the guise of 
lawful alliances permit and even encourage 
marriages based upon the most external of 
attractions, or those entered into for merely 
social or commercial reasons. A sin against 
love seems in Browning's eyes to come the 
nearest of all human failings to the unpar- 
donable sin. 

It must not be supposed from what has 
been said that he had any anarchistic desire 
to do away with the solemnization of mar- 
riage, but his eyes were wide open to the 
fact that there might be sin within the 
marriage bond, and just as surely that 
there might be love pure and true outside of 
it. 

Another illustration of Browning's behef 
in the existence of a love such as Shakespeare 
describes, which looks on tempests and is 
never shaken, is given in the "Inn Album." 
Here, again, the characters are all Enghsh, 
and the story is based upon an actual oc- 
currence. Such changes as Browning has 



SOCIAL IDEALS 181 

made in the story are with the intention of 
pitting against the villainy of an aristocratic 
seducer of the lowest type a bourgeois young 
man, who has been in love with the betrayed 
woman, and who when he finds out that it 
was this man, his friend, who had stood be- 
tween them, does not swerve from his loyalty 
and truth to her, and in the end avenges her 
by killing the aristocratic villain. The young 
man is betrothed to a girl he cares nothing 
for, the woman has married a man she cares 
nothing for. All is of no moment in the 
presence of a genuine loyal emotion which 
shows itself capable of a life of devotion with 
no thought of reward. 

Browning has nowhere translated into more 
noble action the love of a man than in the 
passage where the hero of the story gives him- 
self unselfishly to the woman who has been 
so deeply wronged: 

"Take heart of hers. 
And give her hand of mine with no more heart 
Than now, you see upon this brow I strike! 
What atom of a heart do I retain 
Not all yours ? Dear, you know it ! Easily 
May she accord me pardon when I place 
My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign, 
Since uttermost indignity is spared — 
Mere marriage and no love! And all this time 
Not one word to the purpose! Are you free? 



182 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Only wait ! only let me serve — deserve 

Where you appoint and how you see the good ! 

I have the will — perhaps the power — at least 

Means'that have power against the world. Fortune — 

Take my whole hfe for your experiment! 

If you are bound — in marriage, say — why, still. 

Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do. 

Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand! 

I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know. 

Swing it wide open to let you and him 

Pass freely, — and you need not look, much less 

Fling me a * Thank you! — are you there, old friend ?' 

Don't say that even: I should drop like shot! 

So I feel now, at least: some day, who knows? 

After no end of weeks and months and years 

You might smile! */ believe you did your best!* 

And that shall make my heart leap — leap such leap 

As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there! 

Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look! 

Why? Are you angry? If there's after all. 

Worst come to worst — if still there somehow be 

The shame — I said was no shame, — none, I swear ! — 

In that case, if my hand and what it holds, — 

My name, — might be your safeguard now, — at once — 

Why, here's the hand — you have the heart. " 

The genuine lovers in Browning's gallery 
will occur to every reader of Browning: lovers 
who are not deterred by obstacles, like 
Norbert, lovers Uke Miranda, devoted to a 
woman with a "past"; like the lover in "One 
Way of Love," who still can say, "Those who 
win heaven, blest are they." Sometimes there 



SOCIAL IDEALS 183 

is a problem to be solved, sometimes not. 
Whenever there is a problem, however, it is 
solved by Browning on the side of sincerity 
and truth, never on the side of conven- 
tion. 

Take, for example, "The Statue and the 
Bust," which many have considered to 
uphold an immoral standard and of which 
its defenders declare that the moral point 
of the story lies not in the fact that the 
lady and the Duke wished to elope with 
each other but that they never had 
strength enough of mind to do so. Con- 
sidering what an entirely conventional and 
loveless marriage this of the lady and the 
Duke evidently was we cannot suppose, in the 
light of Browning's solution of similar sit- 
uations, that he would have thought it any 
great crime if the Duke and the lady had 
eloped, since there was so genuine an attrac- 
tion between them. But he does word his 
climax, it must be confessed, in a way to leave 
a loophole of doubt on the subject for those 
who do not like to be scandalized by their 
Browning: *'Let a man contend to the utter- 
most for his life's set prize, be it what it 
will!" 

There is a saving grace to be extracted 
from the last line. 



184 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

" — The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 
Is — the unht lamp and the ungirt loin, 
Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. '* 

In "The Ring and the Book," the problem 
IS similar to that in the "Inn Album," ex- 
cept that the villain in the case is the lawful 
husband. The lover, Caponsacchi, under dif- 
ferent conditions demanding that he shall 
not give the slightest expression to his love, 
rises to a reverential height which even some 
of Browning's readers seem to doubt as pos- 
sible. Caponsacchi is, however, too much 
under the spell of Catholic theology to see the 
mystical meaning of the love which he ac- 
knowledges in his own soul for Pompiha. In 
this poem it is Pompilia who is given the 
divine vision. If I may resay what I have 
said in another connection,* there is no 
moral struggle in Pompiha's short life such 
as that in Caponsacchi's. Both were alike 
in the fact that up to a certain point in their 
hves their full consciousness was unawakened : 
hers slept, through innocence and ignorance; 
his, in spite of knowledge, through lack of 
aspiration. She was rudely awakened by 
suffering; he by the sudden revelation of 
a possible ideal. Therefore, while for him, 
conscious of his past failures, a struggle 

*See Introduction to "Ring and Book" — Camberwell Browning. 



SOCIAL IDEALS 185 

begins: for her, conscious of no failure in her 
duty, which she had always followed accord- 
ing to her light, there simply continues duty 
according to the new light. Neither arch- 
bishop nor friendly "smiles and shakes of 
head' could weaken her conviction that, 
being estranged in soul from her husband, her 
attitude toward him was inevitable. No 
qualms of conscience troubled her as to her 
inalienable right to fly from him. That she 
submitted as long as she did was only because 
no one could be found to aid her. And how 
quick and certain her defence of Caponsacchi, 
threatened by Guido, when he overtakes 
them at the Inn! As she thinks over it 
calmly afterward, she makes no apology, 
but justifies her action as the voice of God. 

"If I sinned so — never obey voice more. 
O, the Just and Terrible, who bids us 'Bear.* 
Not — 'Stand by; bear to see my angels bear!'" 

The gossip over her flight with Caponsacchi 
does not trouble her as it does him. He saved 
her in her great need; the supposition that 
their motives for flight had any taint of 
impurity in them is too puerile to be given a 
thought, yet with the same sublime certainty 
of the right, characteristic of her, she ac- 
knowledges, at the end, her love for Capon- 



186 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

sacchi, and looks for its fulfilment in the 
future when marriage shall be an inter- 
penetration of souls that know themselves 
into one. Having attained so great a good 
she can wish none of the evil she has suffered 
undone. She goes a step farther. Not only- 
does she accept her own suffering for the sake 
of the final supreme good to herseff, but she 
feels assured that good will fall at last to those 
who worked the evil. 

In her absolute certainty of her realization 
of an unexpressed love in a future existence, 
she is only equaled in Browning's poetry by 
the speaker in "Beautiful Evelyn Hope is 
dead." 

That Browning's belief in the mystical 
quality of personal love never changed is 
shown by the fact that near the end of his 
life, in the " Parleying " with Daniel Bartoli, 
he treats a love romance based upon fact in 
a way to emphasize this same truth which so 
constantly appears in his earlier work. The 
lady in this case, who is of the people, having 
been offered a bribe by the King which will 
mean the dishonoring of herself and her 
husband, and which if she does not accept 
will mean her complete separation from her 
husband, instantly decides against the bribe. 
3he prefers love in spirit in a convent to the 



SOCIAL IDEALS 187 

accepting of the King's promise that she will 
be made much of in court if she will sign a 
paper agreeing that her husband shall at once 
cede his dukedoms to the King. She ex- 
plains her attitude to the Duke, who hesitates 
in his decision, whereupon she leaves and 
saves his honor for him, but his inability 
to decide at once upon the higher ground of 
spiritual love reveals to her the inadequacy 
of his love as compared with her own and 
kills her love for him. She later, however, 
marries a man who was only a boy of ten at 
the time of this episode, and their life to- 
gether was a dream of happiness. But she 
dies and the devoted husband becomes a man 
of the world again. The Duke, however, 
has a streak of genuineness in his nature after 
all. Although carried away by the charms 
of a bold, black-eyed, tall creature, a devel- 
opment in keeping with the nature of the 
Duke in the true story. Browning is equal to 
the occasion, and makes him declare that the 
real man in him is dead and is still faithful 
to the old love. All she has is his ghost. 
Some day his soul will again be called into life 
by his ideal love. 

The poet frequently expresses a doubt of 
man's power to be faithful to the letter in 
case of a wife's death. "Any wife to any 



188 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

husband" reveals that feehng as it comes to 
a woman. The poet's answer to this doubt 
is invariably, that where the love was true 
other attraction is a makeshift by which a 
desolate life is made tolerable, or, as in "Fifine 
at the Fair," an ephemeral indulgence in pleas- 
ure which does not touch the reahty of the 
spiritual love. 

Browning was well aware that the ordinary 
woman had a stronger sense of the eternal in 
love than the ordinary man. In relation to 
the Duke in the poem previously mentioned 
he remarks: 

"One leans to like the duke, too; up we'll patch 

Some sort of saintship for him — not to match 

Hers — but man's best and woman's worst amount 

So nearly to the same thing, that we count 

In man a miracle of faithfulness 

If, while unfaithful somewhat, he lay stress 

On the main fact that love, when love indeed. 

Is wholly solely love from first to last — 

Truth — all the rest a He. " 

It may be said that all this is the romantic 
love about which the poets have always sung, 
and has as much existence in real life as the 
ideal of disinterested helpfulness to love- 
lorn damsels sung about in the days of 
chivalry. True, others have sung of the 
exaltation and the immortality of love, and 



SOCIAL IDEALS 189 

few have been those who have found it, but 
nowhere has the distinctively human side 
been touched with such reverence as in 
Browning. It is not Beatrice translated into 
a divine personage to be adored by a wor- 
shipping devotee, but a wholly human woman 
who loves and is loved, who touches divinity 
in Browning's mind. Human love is then 
not an impossible ideal of which he writes in 
poetic language existing only in the realm 
of fancy; it is a living religion, bringing those 
who love nearer to God through the exalta- 
tion of their feeling than any other revelation 
of the human soul. Other states of conscious- 
ness reveal to humanity the existence of the 
absolute, but this gives a premonition of what 
divine love may have i^ store for the aspiring 
soul. 

In holding to such an ideal of love as this 
Browning has ranged himself entirely apart 
from the main tendencies of thought of the 
century, on the relations of men and women, 
which have, on the one hand, been wholly 
conventional, marriage being a contract under 
the law binding for life except in cases of 
definite breaches of conduct, and under the 
Church of affection which is binding only for 
life; and have, on the other hand, gone extreme 
lengths in the advocacy of entire freedom in 



190 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

the relations of the sexes. The first degrades^ 
love by making it too much a matter of law, • 
the second by making it an ephemeral passion 
from which almost everything truly beautiful 
in the relationship of two human beings is, of 
necessity, eliminated. 

To either of these extreme factions Brown- 
ing's attitude is equally incomprehensible. 
The first cries out against his liberalness, the 
second, declaring that human emotion should 
be untrammeled by either Church, law or 
God, would find him a pernicious influence 
against freedom; there are, however, many 
shades of opinion between the two extremes 
which would feel sympathy with his ideals in 
one or more directions. 

The chief difficulty in the acceptance of the 
ideal for most people is that they have not 
yet developed to the plane where feeling 
comes to them with the intensity, the con- 
centration, the depth or the constancy that 
brings with it the sense of revelation. For 
many people law or the Church is absolutely 
necessary to preserve such feeling as they are 
capable of from dissipating itself in shallow 
sentimentalism; while one or the other will 
always be necessary in some form because 
love has its social as well as its personal 
aspect. 



SOCIAL IDEALS 191 

Yet the law and the Church should both f 
allow sufficient freedom for the breaking of re- 
lations from which all sincerity has departed, 
even though humanity as a whole has not 
yet and probably will not for many ages 
arrive at Browning's conception of himian 
love. 

Truth to one's own highest vision in love 
being a cardinal principle with Browning, it 
follows that truth to one's nature in any direc- 
tion is desirable. He even carries this doctrine 
of truth to the individual nature so far as to 
base upon it an apology for the most un- 
mitigated villain he has portrayed, Guido, and 
to put this apology into the mouth of the 
person he had most deeply wronged, Pom- 
pilia. With exquisite vision she, even, can say : 

"But where will God be absent! In his face 
Is light, but in his shadow healing too : 
Let Guido touch the shadow and be healed! 
And as my presence was unfortunate, — 
My earthly good, temptation and a snare, — 
Nothing about me but drew somehow down 
His hate upon me, — somewhat so excused 
Therefore, since hate was thus the truth of him, — 
May my evanishment for evermore 
Help further to relieve the heart that cast 
Such object of its natural loathing forth! 
So he was made; he nowise made himself: 
I could not love him, but his mother did." 



192 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

It is this notion that every nature must 
express its own truth which underhes a poem 
Uke "Fifine at the Fair." Through express- 
ing the truth of itseK, and so grasping at half 
truths, even at the false, it finally reaches a 
higher truth. A nature like Guido's was not 
born with a faculty for development. He 
simply had to live out his own hate. The 
man in ''Fifine" had the power of perceiving 
an ideal, but not the power of living up to it 
without experimentation upon lower planes 
of living, probably the most common type 
of man to-day. There are others like Norbert 
or Mertoun, in whom the ideal truth is the 
real truth of their natures and for whom life 
means the constant expansion of this ideal 
truth within them. In many of the varying 
types of men and women portrayed by Brown- 
ing there is the recognition of the possibility 
of psychic development either by means of 
experience or by sudden intuitions, and if, 
as in the case of Guido, there is no develop- 
ment in this life, there is hope in a future 
existence in a universe ruled by a God of love. 

In his views upon human character and its 
possibilities of development Browning is, of 
course, in touch with the scientific views on 
the subject which filled the air in all later 
nineteenth-century thought, changing the or- 



SOCIAL IDEALS 193 

thodox ideal of a static humanity born in 
sin and only to be saved by belief in certain 
dogmas to that of a humanity born to develop ; 
changing the notion that sin was a terrible 
and absolutely defined entity, against which 
every soul had ceaselessly to war, into the 
notion that sin is a relative evil, consequent 
upon lack of development, which, as the 
human soul advances on its path, led by its 
inborn consciousness of the divine to be 
attained, will gradually disappear 

But the evil which results from this lack of 
development in individuals to other individu- 
als, and to society at large, brings a problem 
which as we have already seen in the first 
chapter is not so easy of solution. Yet Brown- 
ing solves it, for is it not through the combat 
with this evil that the soul is given its real 
opportunity for development? Pain and suf- 
fering give rise to the thirst for happiness and 
joy, and through the arousing of sympathy 
and pity, the desire that others shall have 
happiness and joy, therefore to be despairing 
and pessimistic about evil or to wish for its 
immediate annihilation would really be sui- 
cidal to the best interests of the human race; 
nay, he even goes farther than this, as is hinted 
in one of his last poems, "Rephan," and 
imagines that any other state than one of 



194 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

flux between good and evil would be monoto- 
nous: 

*' Startle me up, by an Infinite 
Discovered above and below me — height 
And depth alike to attract my flight, 

*' Repel my descent: by hate taught love. 
Oh, gain were indeed to see above 
Supremacy ever — to move, remove, 

"Not reach — aspire yet never attain 
To the object aimed at! Scarce in vain, — 
As each stage I left nor touched again. 

"To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss. 
Wring knowledge from ignorance: — just for this — 
To add one drop to a love — abyss! 

"Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men. 
You fear, you agonize, die: what then? 
Is an end to your Hfe's work out of ken? 

"Have you no assurance that, earth at end. 
Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend 
In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?" 

In his attitude toward the existence of 
evil Browning takes issue with Carlyle, as 
already noted in the second chapter. Carlyle, 
as Browning represents him, cannot reconcile 
the existence of evil with beneficent and 
omniscient power. He makes the opponent, 
who is an echo of Carlyle in the argument in 

Bernard de Mandeville, " exclaim: 



(( 



SOCIAL IDEALS 195 

"Where's 
Knowledge, where power and will in evidence 

'Tis Man's-play merely ! Craft foils rectitude. 

Malignity defeats beneficence. 

And grant, at very last of all, the feud 

'Twixt good and evil ends, strange thoughts intrude 

Though good be garnered safely and good's foe 

Bundled for burning. Thoughts steal even so — 

Why grant tares leave to thus o'ertop, o'ertower 

Their field-mate, boast the stalk and flaunt the flower. 

Triumph one sunny minute?" 

No attempt must be made to show God's 
reason for allowing evil. Any such attempt 
will fail. This passage comes as near as any 
in Browning to a plunge into the larger social 
questions which during the nineteenth century 
have come more and more to the front, and is 
an index of just where the poet stood in rela- 
tion to the social movements of the century's 
end. His gaze was so centered upon the 
individual and the power of the individual 
to work out his own salvation and the need of 
evil in the process that his philosophical 
attitude toward evil quite overtops the mili- 
tant interest in overcoming it. 

Carlyle, on the other hand, saw the immense 
evil of the social conditions in England, and 
raged and stormed against them, but could 
see no light by which evil could be turned 
into good. He little realized that his own 



196 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

storming at the ineptitude, the imbecihty, 
the fool-ness of society, and his own despair 
over the, to him, unaccountable evils of exist- 
ence, were in themselves a positive good 
growing out of the evil. Though he was not 
to suggest practical means for leading the 
masses out of bondage, he was to call atten- 
tion in trumpet tones to the fact that the 
bondage existed. By so doing he was taking 
a first step or rather drawing aside the cur- 
tain and revealing the dire necessity that 
steps should be taken and taken soon. While 
Carlyle was militantly shouting against evil 
to some purpose which would later mean 
militant action against it, Browning was 
settling in his own mind just what relation 
evil should hold to good in the scheme of the 
universe, and writing a poem to tell why he 
was a liberal. In fine, Carlyle was opening 
the way toward the socialism of the latter 
part of the century, while Browning was still 
found in the camp of what the socialist of to- 
day calls the middle-class individualist. 

Liberalism, which had taken on social con- 
ditions to the point through legislation where 
every man was free to be a property holder 
if he could manage to become one, and to 
amass wealth, left out of consideration the 
fact that he never could be free as long as he 



m 

^K^ 







J 



\\'iLLiAM Morris 



SOCIAL IDEALS 197 

had to compete with every other man in the 
state to get these things. Hence the move- 
ment of the working classes to gain freedom 
by substituting for a competitive form of 
society a cooperative form. Great names in 
hterature and art have helped toward the on- 
coming of this movement. Carlyle had railed 
at the millions of the English nation, "mostly 
fools;" Ruskin had bemoaned the enthrone- 
ment of ugliness as the result of the industrial 
conditions; Matthew Arnold had proposed a 
panacea for the ills of the social condition in 
the bringing about of social equality through 
culture, and, best of all, WilHam Morris had 
not only talked but acted. 

To any student of social movements to-day, 
whether he has been drawn into the swirl of 
socialistic propaganda or whether he is still 
comfortably sitting in his parlor feeling an in- 
tellectual sympathy but no emotional call to 
leave his parlor and be up and doing, Morris ap- 
pears as the most interesting figure of the cen- 
tury. The pioneers in the nineteenth-century 
movement toward socialism in England, unless 
we except the social enthusiasm of a Shelley or 
a Blake, were Owen and Maurice. Owen was 
that remarkable anomaly, a self-made man 
who had gained his wealth because of the new 
industrial order inaugurated by the invention 



198 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of machinery, who yet could look at the 
circumstances so fortuitous for him in an 
impersonal manner, and realize that what 
had put a silver spoon into his own mouth 
was taking away even pewter spoons from 
other men's mouths. Although he was really 
in love with the new order of machine produc- 
tion, he realized what many to-day fail to see, 
that machine production organized for the 
benefit of private persons would most assur- 
edly mean the poverty and the degradation 
of the workers. He did not stop here, how- 
ever, but spent his vast fortune in trying 
to make the conditions of the workingmen 
better. In the estimation of socialists to-day 
his work was of a very high order, *'not mere 
utopianism." It bore no similarity to the 
romantic dreams of poets who saw visions of 
a perfect society regardless of the fact that a 
perfect society cannot suddenly blossom from 
conditions of appalling misery and degrada- 
tion. Owen was a practical business man. 
He knew all the ins and outs of the industrial 
regime, and consequently he had a practical 
program, not a dream, w^hich he wished to 
see carried out. Accounts of the conditions 
of the workers at that time are heartrending. 
Everywhere the same tale of abject poverty, 
ignorance, and oppression in field and factory, 



SOCIAL IDEALS 199 

long hours of labor and dear food. To bring 
help to these downtrodden people was the 
burning desire of Robert Owen and his 
followers. His efforts were not rewarded by 
that success which they deserved, his failure 
being a necessary concomitant of the fact 
that even a practical program for betterment 
cannot suddenly take efifect owing to the 
inevitable inertia of any long-established con- 
ditions. In showing the causes which kept 
him from the full accomplishment of his 
ideals, in spite of his genuine practicalness, 
Brougham Villiers, the recent historian of 
the socialist movement in England, says he 
attempted too much "to influence the workers 
from without, trying, of course vainly, to 
induce the governing classes to interest them- 
selves in the work of social reform. Yet it is 
difficult to see what else he could have done 
at the time. We have already shown how 
utterly disorganized the working classes were, 
how incapable, indeed, of any organization. 
They were also destitute of political power, 
and miserably underpaid. What could they 
do to help themselves? Help, if it was to 
come at all, must come from the only people 
who then had the power, if they only had 
the will, to accord it, and to them, at first, 
Robert Owen appealed. Later, he turned to 



200 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

the people, and for them indeed his work was 
not utterly wasted, though generations were 
to pass before the full effect of it could be 
seen." 

However abortive his attempts to gain polit- 
ical sympathy for his socialist program, and 
in spite of the fact that socialist agitation 
came to a standstill in England with the 
defeat of the somewhat chaotic socialism of 
the Chartists, it cannot be doubted that his 
efforts influenced the political reformers who 
were to take up one injustice after another 
and fight for its melioration until the working 
classes were at least brought to a plane 
where they could begin to organize and 
develop toward the still higher plane where 
they could themselves take their own salva- 
tion in hand. 

Another man who did much to bring the 
workingman's cause into prominence was 
Maurice, who emphasized the Christian aspect 
of the movement. He was an excellent sup- 
plement to Owen, whose liberal views on 
religion militated in some quarters against an 
acceptance of his humane views in regard to 
workingmen. 

Notwithstanding the personal strength of 
these two men they failed not only in the 
practical attainment of their object, but their 



SOCIAL IDEALS 201 

ideas on socialism did not even wedge itself into 
the thought consciousness of the Englishmen. 

The men who did more than any one else 
to awaken the sleeping English con- 
sciousness were Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold and 
Morris. Of these Morris held a position 
midway between the old-fashioned dreamer 
of dreams and the new-fashioned hustling 
political socialist, who now sends his repre- 
sentatives to Parliament and has his "say" 
in the national afiFairs of the country. 

Being a poet, he could, of course, dream 
dreams, and one of these, ''The Dream of 
John Ball, " puts the case of the toilers in a 
form at once so convincing and so full of 
divine pity that it does not seem possible it 
could be read even by the most hardened of 
trust magnates without making him see how 
unjust has been the distribution of this world's 
goods through the making of one man do the 
work of many: "In days to come one man 
shall do the work of a hundred men — yea, 
of a thousand or more: and this is the shift 
of mastership that shall make many masters 
and many rich men." This is a riddle which 
John Ball cannot grasp at once, and when it 
is explained to him he is still more mystified 
at the result. 

''Thou hast seen the weaver at his loom: 



202 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

think how it should be if he sit no longer before 
the web and cast the shuttle and draw home 
the sley, but if the shed open of itself, speed 
through it as swift as the eye can follow, and 
the sley come home of itself, and the weaver 
standing by . . . looking to half a dozen 
looms and bidding them what to do. And as 
with the weaver so with the potter, and the 
smith, and every worker in metals, and all 
other crafts, that it shall be for them looking 
on and tending, as with the man that sitteth 
in the cart while the horse draws. Yea, at 
last so shall it be even with those who are 
mere husbandmen; and no longer shall the 
reaper fare afield in the morning with his 
hook over his shoulder, and smite and bind 
and smite again till the sun is down and the 
moon is up; but he shall draw a thing made 
by men into the field with one or two horses, 
and shall say the word and the horses shall 
go up and down, and the thing shall reap 
and gather and bind, and do the work of many 
men. Imagine all this in thy mind if thou 
canst, at least as ye may imagine a tale of 
enchantment told by a minstrel, and then 
tell me what shouldst thou deem that the 
life of men would be amidst all this, men 
such as these of the township here, or the men 
of the Canterbury guilds." 



SOCIAL IDEALS 20S 

And John Ball's conclusion is that things 
in that day to come will be not as they are 
but as they ought to be. With irresistible 
logic he declares: 

" I say that if men still abide men as I have 
known them, and unless these folk of England 
change as the land changeth — and forsooth 
of the men, for good and for evil, I can think no 
other than I think now, or behold them other 
than I have known them and loved them — 
I say if the men be still men, what will happen 
except that there should be all plenty in the 
land, and not one poor man therein . . . 
for there would then be such abundance of 
good things, that, as greedy as the lords 
might be, there would be enough to satisfy 
their greed and yet leave good living for all 
who labored with their hands; so that these 
should labor for less than now, and they would 
have time to learn knowledge," and he goes 
on, " take part in the making of laws." 

But Morris was not the man to dream, 
merely. Though he did not trouble himself 
about the doctrinaire side of socialism, he 
preached it constantly from the human side 
and from the artistic side. While some 
socialist writers make us feel that socialism 
might possibly only be Gradgrind in another 
guise, he makes us feel that peace and plenty 



204 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

and loveliness would attend upon the sons 
and daughters of sociahsm. As one of his 
many admirers says of him: "He was an 
out-and-out Communist because of the essen- 
tial sanity of a mind incapable of the desire 
to monopolize anything he could not use." 

The authoritarianism of the Marxian social- 
ists was distasteful to him, for, to quote from 
the same admirer, his ''conception of socialism 
was that of a free society, based on the simple 
rights of all to use the earth and anything 
in it, and the consequent abolition of all 
competition for the means of life." His 
attitude of mind on these points led him to 
break away from the Social Democratic Fed- 
eration, which, with its political program, 
was distasteful to Morris's more purely social 
feeling, and found the Socialist League. This 
emphasized more particularly the artistic 
side of socialism. Morris and his followers 
were bent upon making hfe a beautiful thing 
as well as a comfortable thing. 

According to all accounts, the League was 
not as great a force in the development of 
socialist ideals as was Morris himself, who 
inspired such men as Burne-Jones and Walter 
Crane with a sympathy in the new ideals, as 
well as multitudes of lesser men in the crowds 
that gathered to listen to him in Waltham 



SOCIAL IDEALS 205 

Green or in some other like open place of a 
Sunday. 

Morris's chief contribution to the growth 
of the cause was perhaps his own business 
plant, into which he put as many of his 
ideals for the betterment of the workingmen's 
conditions as he was able to do under existing 
conditions. Who has not gloated over his 
exquisite editions of Chaucer and the like — 
books in which even the punctuation marks 
are a delight to the eye, and the illustrations as 
far beyond ordinary illustrations as the punc- 
tuation marks are beyond ordinary periods. 
If anything could add to the richness of 
the interior it is the contrasting simplicity of 
the white vellum bindings, and, again, if there 
is another possible touch of grace — a gilding 
of the lily — what could better fulfil that 
purpose than the outer boxing covered with 
a Morris cotton print! The critical may 
object that these Morris editions are so 
expensive that none but millionaire biblio- 
philes can have many of them. How many 
of us have even seen them except in such 
collections! And how many of his workmen 
are able to share in this product of their 
labor to any greater extent than the product 
of labor is usually shared in by its producers, 
may be asked. 



206 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Though we are obhged to answer that the 
workmen probably do not have the Morris 
books in their own hbraries, they yet have 
the joy of making these beautiful books 
under conditions of happy workmanship — 
that is, they are skilled craftsmen, who have 
been trained in an apprenticeship, who are 
asked to work only eight hours a day, who 
receive higher wages than other workmen and, 
above all, who have the stimulation of the 
presence of Morris, himseK, working among 
them. 

Morris's enthusiasm for a more universally 
happy and beautiful society combined with 
the object lesson of his own methods in con- 
ducting a business upon genuinely artistic 
principles has done an incalculable amount 
in spreading the gospel of socialism. Still 
there was too much of the laissez faire atmos- 
phere about his attitude for it to bring about 
any marked degree of progress. 

The opinion of Mr. William Clarke who had 
many conversations with Morris on the sub- 
ject reveals that, after all, there was too 
much of the poet about him for him to be a 
really practical force in the movement. He 
writes : 

"It is not easy to understand how Morris 
proposes to bring about the condition of things 



SOCIAL IDEALS 207 

he looks forward to. No parliamentary or 
municipal methods, no reliance upon law- 
making machinery, an abhorrence of every- 
thing that smacks of 'polities': it all seems 
very impracticable to the average man, and 
certainly suggests the poet rather than the 
man of affairs. What Morris thinks will 
really happen is, I should say, judging from 
numerous conversations I have had with him, 
something like this: Existing society is, he 
thinks, gradually, but with increasing momen- 
tum, disintegrating through its own rotten- 
ness. The capitalist system of production 
is breaking down fast and is compelled to 
exploit new regions in Africa and other parts, 
where he thinks its term will be short. 
Economically, socially, morally, politically, 
religiously, civilization is becoming bankrupt. 
Meanwhile it is for the socialist to take 
advantage of this disintegration by spreading 
discontent, by preaching economic truths, and 
by any kind of demonstration which may 
harass the authorities and develop among the 
people an esprit de corps. By these means the 
people will, in some way or other, be ready to 
take up the industry of the world when the 
capitalist class is no longer able to direct or 
control it. Morris believes less in a violent 
revolution than he did and thinks that work- 



208 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

men's associations and labor unions form a 
kind of means between brute force on the one 
hand and a parhamentary poUcy on the other. 
He does not, however, share the sanguine 
views of John Burns as to the wonders to be 
accomphshed by the 'new' trades unionism." 

The practical ineffectiveness of the Morris 
sociaUsm in spite of its having taken some 
steps in the direction of vital activity was over- 
come by the next socialist body which came 
into prominence — the Fabian Society, in 
which Bernard Shaw has been so conspicuous 
a figure. 

As already mentioned, the Fabians are not 
a fighting body, but a solidly educational 
body. To them is due the bringing of social- 
ism into the realm of political economy, and 
in so doing they have striven to harmonize 
it with English practical political methods. 
Besides this, they have done a vast amount of 
work in educating public opinion, not with 
the view to immediately converting the 
English nation to a belief in the changing 
of the present order into one wholly socialistic, 
but with a view to introducing socialistic 
treatment of the individual problems which 
arise in contemporary politics. 

Their campaign of education was conducted 
so well that its eflFects were soon visible, not 




John Burns 



SOCIAL IDEALS 209 

only in the modification of public opinion, 
but upon the workingmen themselves. The 
method was simple enough: "If any public, 
especially any social, question came to the 
front, the Fabian method was to make a 
careful independent study of the matter, and 
present to the public, in a penny pamphlet, 
a thoughtful statement of the case and some 
common sense, and incidentally socialistic, 
suggestions for a solution." Fabian ideas 
were thus introduced into the consciousness 
of the awakening trades unionists. 

It has been objected that the gain was 
much more for the trades unionists than for 
the Fabians. Their one-time eager pupils 
have, it is said, progressed beyond their 
masters, as a review of recent socialistic 
tendencies would divulge had we the time to 
follow them in this place. However that 
may be, the great fact remains that the 
Fabians have done more than any other 
branch of socialists to bridge over the distance 
between what the English writers call the 
middle-class idealist and the proletarian, with 
the result that the proletarian has begun to 
think for himself and to translate middle-class 
idealism into proletarian realism. 

Socialism, from being the watch word of the 
enthusiastic revolutionary, began to be dis- 



210 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

cussed in every intelligent household and in 
every debating society. This enormous growth 
in public sentiment occurred during the session 
of the Unionist Parliament, 1886-92. When 
this Parliament opened there was hardly any 
socialist literature, and when it closed every- 
body was reading Bellamy and the "Fabian 
Essays," and Sir William Harcourt had made 
his memorable remark: "We are all socialists 
now." 

The gesticulating and bemoaning idealists, 
the Carlyles and the Ruskins, the revolution- 
ary but laissez faire prophets like Morris, 
who believed in a complete change but not 
in using any of the means at hand to bring 
about that change, had given place to men 
like Keir Hardie and John Burns, who had 
sprung into leadership from the ranks of the 
workingmen themselves, and who were to be 
later their representatives in Parliament when 
the Independent Labor Party came into exist- 
ence. All this had been done by that group 
of progressive men, long-headed enough to 
see that the ideal of a better and more beau- 
tiful social life could not be gained except by 
a long and toilsome process of education and 
of action which would consciously follow the 
principles of growth discovered by scientists 
to obtain in all unconscious cosmic and 



SOCIAL IDEALS 211 

physical development, the very principle 
which as we have seen, Browning declared 
should have guided his hero Sordello long 
before the Fabian socialists came into exist- 
ence — namely, the principle of evolution. 
That their methods should have peacefully 
brought about the conditions where it was 
possible to form an Independent Labor Party, 
which would have the power to speak and 
act for itself instead of working as the Fabians 
themselves do through the parties already in 
power, shouts aloud for the wisdom of their 
policy. And is there not still plenty of work 
for them to do in the still further educating 
of all parties toward the flowering of genuine 
democracy, when the dreams of the dreamer 
shall have become actualities, because true 
and not spurious ways of making them actual 
shall have been worked out by experience.^ 

This remarkable growth in social ideals was 
taking place during the ninth decade of the 
century and the last decade of Browning's 
life. Is there any indication in his later work 
that he was conscious of it? There is certainly 
no direct evidence in his work that he pro- 
gressed any farther in the development of 
democratic ideals than we find in the liberal- 
ism of such a parliamentary leader as Mr. 
Gladstone, while in that poem in which he 



212 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

considers more especially than in any other the 
subject of better conditions for the people, 
"Sordello," he distinctly expresses a mood of 
doubt as to the advisability of making condi- 
tions too easy for the human being, who needs 
the hardships and ills of life to bring his 
soul to perfection, a far more important 
thing in Browning's eyes than to live com- 
fortably and beautifully. All he wishes for 
the human being is the fine chance to make 
the most of himself spiritually. The socialist 
would say that he could not secure the chance 
to do this except in a society where the 
murderous principle of competition should 
give way to that of cooperation. With this 
Browning might agree. Indeed, may this 
not have been the very principle Sordello 
had in mind as something revealed to him 
which neither Guelf nor Ghibelline could see, 
or was this only the more obvious principle of 
republican as opposed to monarchical prin- 
ciple and still falling under an individualistic 
conception of society? 

While his work is instinct with sympathy 
for all classes and conditions of men, Browning 
does not feel the ills of life with the intensity 
of a Carlyle, nor its ugliness with the grief 
of a Ruskin, nor yet its lack of culture with 
the priggishness of an Arnold, nor would he 



SOCIAL IDEALS 213 

stand in open spaces and preach discontent 
to the masses hke Morris. Why? Because 
he from the first was made wise to see a good 
in evil, a hope in ill-success, to be proud of 
men's fallacies, their half reasons, their faint 
aspirings, upward tending all though weak, 
the lesson learned after weary experiences of 
life by Paracelsus. His thought was centered 
upon the worth of every human being to him- 
self and for God. Earth is after all only a 
place to grow in and prepare one's self for lives 
to come, and failure here, so long as the fight 
has been bravely fought, is to be regarded 
with anything but regret, for it is through 
the failure that the vision of the future is 
made more sure. 

What he finds true, as we saw, in the 
religious or philosophical world, he finds true 
in the moral world. Lack in human knowl- 
edge points the way to God; lack in human 
success points the way to immortality. 

The meaning of this life in relation to a 
future life being so much more important than 
this life in itself, and man's individual develop- 
ment being so much more important than his 
social development, Browning naturally would 
not turn his attention upon those practical, 
social or governmental means by which even 
the chance for individual development must 



214 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

be secured. He is too much occupied with 
the larger questions. He is not even a middle- 
class idealist, dreaming dreams of future 
earthly bliss; he is the prophet of future exist- 
ences. 

Does his practical influence upon the social 
development of the century amount to nothing 
then? Not at all. He started out on his 
voyage through the century toward the 
democratic ideal in the good ship Individ- 
ualism — the banner ship indeed. What he 
has emphasized upon this voyage is first the 
paramount worth of each and every human 
being, whether good or bad. Second, the 
possibility in every human being of conceiving 
an ideal, toward which by the exertion of 
his will power he should aspire, battling 
steadfastly against every obstruction that life 
throws in his course. Third, that even those 
who are incapable of formulating an ideal 
must be regarded as living out the truth 
of their natures and must therefore be treated 
with compassion. Fourth, that the highest 
function of the human soul is love, which 
expresses itself in many ways, but attains its 
full flowering only in the love of man and 
woman on a plane of spiritual exaltation, and 
that through this power of human love some 
glimpse of the divine is caught; therefore to 



SOCIAL IDEALS 215 

this function of the soul it is of the utmost 
importance that human beings should be 
loyal and true, even if that loyalty and truth 
conflict with conventional ways of looking 
at life. Saihng in this good ship he also 
expresses his sympathy indirectly in his 
dramas and directly upon several occasions 
with the ideals of political freedom which 
during the century have been making progress 
toward democracy in the English Parhament 
through the legislation of the liberals, whose 
laws have brought a greater and greater meas- 
ure of freedom to the middle classes and some 
measure of freedom to the working classes. 

But it seems as if when nearing the end 
of the century Browning landed from his ship 
upon some high island and straining his eyes 
toward the horizon of the dawn of another 
life did not fully realize that there was another 
good ship, Socialism, struggling to reach the 
ideal of democracy, and now become the 
banner ship whose work is to sail out into 
the unknown, turbulent seas of the future, 
finding the path to another high island in 
order that the way may be made clear for the 
ship Individualism to continue her course to 
another stage in the voyage toward a perfect 
democracy. And as the new ship, Socialism, 
passes on its way it will do well to heed the 



216 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

vision of the poet seer, straining his eyes 
toward the dawn of other hves in other 
spheres, lest in the struggle and strain to 
bring about a more comfortable and beau- 
tiful life upon earth, the important truth be 
slighted that humanity has a higher destiny 
to fulfil than can be realized in the most 
Utopian dreams of an earthly democracy. 
This truth is in fact not only forgotten but 
is absolutely denied by many of the latter- 
day social reformers. 

To sum up, I think one is justified in 
concluding that as a sympathizer with the 
liberal political tendencies of the nineteenth 
century Browning is of his age. In his qui- 
escence upon the proletarian movement of 
the latter part of the nineteenth century he 
seems to have been left behind by his age. In 
his insistence upon the worth of the individual 
to himself and to God he is both of his age 
and beyond it. As has been said of phil- 
osophy, "It cannot give us bread but it can 
give us God, soul and immortality," so we 
may say of Browning, that though he did 
not raise up his voice in the cry of the prole- 
tarian for bread, he has insisted upon the 
truths of God, the soul and immortaUty. 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 

IN THE foregoing chapters the relations of 
the poet to the philosophical, religious, 
political, and social movements of the nine- 
teenth century have been pointed out. In 
this and the next chapter some account of 
his relation to the artistic and literary ideals 
of the century will be attempted. 

Browning's relation to the art of the 
century is, of course, twofold, dealing as it 
must with his own conceptions and criticisms 
of art as well as with the position of his own 
art in the poetic development of the century. 

In order to understand more fully his own 
contribution to the developing literary stand- 
ards of the century it may be well first to 
consider the fundamental principles of art 
laid down by him in various poems wherein 
he has deliberately dealt with the subject. 

The poem in which he has most clearly 
formulated the general principles underlying 
the growth of art is the "Parleying" with 
Charles Avison. Though music is the special 

217 



218 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

art under consideration, the rules of growth 
obtaining in that are equally applicable to 
other arts. They are found to be, as we 
should expect in Browning, a combination 
of the ideas of evolution and conservation. 
Though the standards of art change and 
develop, because as man's soul evolves, more 
complex forms are needed to express his deeper 
experiences, his wider vision, yet in each 
stage of the development there is an element 
of permanent beauty which by the aid of 
the historical sense man may continue to 
enjoy. That element of permanence exists 
when genuine feeling and aspiration find 
expression in forms of art. The element 
of change grows out of the fact that both 
the thought expressed and the form in which 
it is expressed are partial manifestations of 
the beauty or truth toward which feeling 
aspires; hence the need of fresh attempts to 
reach the infinite. The permanence of feeling, 
expressing itself in ever new forms, is brought 
out finely in this passage: 

" Truths escape 

Time's insufficient garniture: they fade. 

They fall — those sheathings now grown sere, whose aid 

Was infinite to truth they wrapped, saved fine 

And free through march frost: May dews crystalline 
Nourish truth merely, — does June boast the fruit 

As — not new vesture merely but, to boat. 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 219 

Novel creation? Soon shall fade and fall 
Myth after myth — the husk-like Hes I call 
New truth's Corolla-safeguard. " 

In another passage is shown how the 
permanence of feehng conserves even the 
form, if we will bring ourselves into touch 
with it: 

"Never dream 
That what once lived shall ever die! They seem 
Dead — do they? lapsed things lost in limbo? Bring 
Our hfe to kindle theirs, and straight each king 
Starts, you shall see, stands up. " 

This kindling of an old form with our own 
life is more difficult in the case of music than 
it is in painting or poetry, for in these we have 
a concrete form to deal with — a form which 
reflects the thought with much more definite- 
ness than music is able to do. The strength 
and weakness, at once, of music is that it 
gives expression to subtler regions of thought 
and feeling than the other arts, at the same 
time that the form is more evanescent, because 
fashioned out of elements infinitely less 
related to nature than those of other art 
forms. In his poems on music, the poet 
always emphasizes these aspects of music. 
Its supremacy as a means of giving expression 
to the subtlest regions of feeling is dwelt upon 



220 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

in '^Abt Vogler" and "Fifine at the Fair." 
The Abbe, from the standpoint of the creator 
of music, feels so strongly from the inside its 
power for expressing infinite aspiration that 
in his ecstasy he exclaims: "The rest may 
reason and welcome. 'Tis we musicians 
know." Upon the evanescence of the form 
peculiar emphasis is also laid in this poem, 
through the fact that the music is improvised. 
Yet even this fact does not mean the entire 
annihilation of the form. In the tenth stanza 
of the poem the idea of the permanence of 
the art form as well as of the feeling is ex- 
panded into a symbol of the immortality of 
all good: 

"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor 
power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melo- 
dist 
When eternity confirms the conception of an hour, 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too 
hard. 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky. 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; 

Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by-and-by. 

The sophistical arguer in "Fifine" feels 
this same power of music to express thoughts 
not to be made palpable in any other manner. 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 221 

"Words struggle with the weight 
So feebly of the False, thick element between 
Our soul, the True, and Truth ! which, but that intervene 
False shows of things, were reached as easily by thought 
Reducible to word, and now by yearnings wrought 
Up with thy fine free force, oh Music, that canst thrill. 
Electrically win a passage through the lid 
Of earthly sepulchre, our words may push against, 
Hardly transpierce as thou. " 

And again, in another passage, he gives to 
music the power of conserving a mood of 
feehng, which in this case is not an exalted 
one, since it is one that chimes in with his 
own rather questionable feeling for Fifine, the 
fiz-gig. It is found in Schumann's " Carnival" : 

"Thought hankers after speech, while no speech may evince 
Feeling Hke music, — mine, o'er-burthened with each gift 
From every visitant, at last resolved to shift 
Its burthen to the back of some musician dead 
And gone, who feeling once what I feel now, instead 
Of words, sought sounds, and saved forever, in the same, 
Truth that escapes prose, — nay, puts poetry to shame. 
I read the note, I strike the Key, I bid record 
The instrument — thanks greet the veritable word! 
And not in vain I urge: *0 dead and gone away. 
Assist who struggles yet, thy strength becomes my stay. 
Thy record serve as well to register — I felt 
And knew thus much of truth ! With me, must knowledge 

melt 
Into surmise and doubt and disbelief unless 
Thy music reassure — I gave no idle guess, 



222 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

But gained a certitude I yet may hardly keep! 
What care? since round is piled a monumental heap 
Of music that conserves the assurance, thou as well 
Was certain of the same! thou, master of the spell, 
Mad'st moonbeams marble, didst record what other men 
Feel only to forget!" 

The man in the case is merely an appre- 
ciator, not a creator, yet he experiences with 
equal force music's power as a recorder of 
feeling. He notes also that the feeling must 
appear from time to time in a new dress, 

*'the stuff that's made 
To furnish man with thought and feeling is purveyed 
Substantially the same from age to age, with change 
Of the outside only for successive f casters. '* 

In this case, the old tunes have actually 
been worked over by the more modern 
composer whose form has not yet suflBciently 
gone by to fail of an immediate appeal to this 
person with feelings kindled by similar experi- 
ences. What the speaker in the poem per- 
ceives is not merely the fact of the feelings 
experienced but the power of the music to 
take him off upon a long train of more or less 
philosophical reasoning born of that very 
element of change. In this power of sugges- 
tiveness lies music's greater range of spiritual 
force even when the feeling expressed is not 
of the deepest. 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 223 

If we look at his poems on painting, the 
same principles of art are insisted upon except 
that more emphasis is laid upon the positive 
value of the incompleteness of the form. 
In so far as painting or sculpture reaches a 
perfect unity of thought and form it loses its 
power of suggesting an infinite beauty beyond 
any that our earth-born race may express. 

This in Browning's opinion is the limitation 
of Greek art. It touches perfection or com- 
pletion in expression and in so doing limits 
its range to the brief passion of a day. The 
effect of such art is to arouse a sort of despair, 
for it so far transcends merely human beauty 
that there seems nothing left to accomplish: 

**So, testing your weakness by their strength. 
Your meagre charms by their rounded beauty 
Measured by Art in your breadth and length, 
You learned — - to submit is a mortal's duty. " 

When such a deadlock as this is reached 
through the stultifying effect of an art expres- 
sion which seems to have embodied all there 
is of passion and physical beauty, the one 
way out is to turn away from the abject con- 
templation of such art and go back again 
to humanity itself, in whose widening nature 
may be discovered the promise of an eternity 
of progression. Therefore, "To cries of Greek 



224 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

art and what more wish you?" the poet 
would have it that the early painters replied: 

"To become now self-acquainters. 

And paint man, whatever the issue! 
Make new hopes shine through the flesh they fray. 

New fears aggandize the rags and tatters: 
To bring the invisible full into play! 

Let the visible go to the dogs — what matters? '* 

The revolution in art started by these early 
worthies had more of spiritual promise in it 
than the past perfection — "The first of the 
new, in our race's story, beats the last of the 
old." 

His emphasis here upon the return to 
humanity in order to gain a new source of 
inspiration in art is further illustrated in his 
attitude toward the two painters which he 
portrays so splendidly: Fra Lippo Lippi, the 
realist, whose Madonnas looked like real 
women, and who has scandalized some critics 
on this account, and Andrea del Sarto, the 
faultless painter, who exclaims in despair as 
he gazes upon a picture by Raphael, in which 
he sees a fault to pardon in the drawing's 
line, an error that he could alter for the 
better, "But all the play, the insight and the 
stretch," beyond him. 

The importance of basing art upon the study 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 225 

of the human body is later insisted upon in 
Francis Furini, not as an end in itself, but as 
the dwelling place of the soul. "Let my 
pictures prove I know," says Furini, 

** Somewhat of what this fleshly frame of ours 
Or is or should be, how the soul empowers 
The body to reveal its every mood 
Of love and hate, pour forth its plenitude 
Of passion. " 

The evolutionary ideal appears again in 
his utterances upon poetry, though when 
speaking of poetry it is the value of the 
subject matter and its intimate relation to the 
form upon which he dwells. 

The little poem *' Popularity" shows as 
clearly as any the importance which he 
attaches to a new departure in poetic expres- 
sion, besides giving vent to his scorn of the 
multitude which sees nothing in the work 
of the innovator but which is ready at a 
later date to laud his imitators. Any minor 
poet, for that matter, any Nokes or Stokes 
who merely prints blue according to the 
poetic conventions of the past, possessing not 
a suspicion of the true inspiration which goes 
to the making of a poet of the new order, is 
more acceptable to an unseeing public than 
him with power to fish "the murex up" that 
contains the precious drop of royal blue. 



226 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

More than one significant hint may be 
gleaned from his verse in regard to his opinion 
upon the formal side of the poet's art. In 
''Transcendentalism" he has his fling at the 
didactic poet who pleases to speak naked 
thoughts instead of draping them in sights 
and sounds, for ''song" is the art of the poet. 
Some stout mage like him of Halberstadt has 
his admiration, who with a 

*Look you!' vents a brace of rhymes. 
And in there breaks the sudden rose herself. 
Over us, under, round us every side. 
Nay, in and out the tables and the chairs 
And musty volumes, Boehme's book and all, — 
Buries us with a glory young once more. 
Pouring heaven into this shut house of life. '* 

He was equally averse to an ornate classical 
embellishment of a latter day subject or to 
a looking at nature through mythopoeic Greek 
eyes. This is driven home in the splendid 
fooling in "Gerard de Lairesse" where the 
poet himself indulges by way of a joke in 
some high-flown classical imagery in derision 
of the style of Lairesse and hints covertly 
probably at the nineteenth-century masters of 
classical resuscitation, in subject matter and 
allusion, Swinburne and Morris. Reacting to 
soberer mood, he reiterates his belief in the ut- 
ter deadness of Greek ideals of art, speaking 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 227 

with a strength of conviction so profound as to 
make one feel that here at least Browning 
suffered from a decided limitation, all the 
more strange, too, when one considers his 
own masterly treatment of Greek subjects. 
To the poets whose poetic creed is 

"Dream afresh old godlike shapes. 
Recapture ancient fable that escapes. 
Push back reality, repeople earth 
With vanished falseness, recognize no worth 
In fact new-born unless 'tis rendered back 
Pallid by fancy, as the western rack 
Of fading cloud bequeaths the lake some gleam 
Of its gone glory!" 

he would reply, 

"Let things be — not seem, 
I counsel rather, — do, and nowise dream! 
Earth's young significance is all to learn; 
The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn 
Where who seeks fire finds ashes. Ghost, forsooth! 
What was the best Greece babbled of as truth? 
A shade, a wretched nothing, — sad, thin, drear. 



Sad school 
Was Hades! Gladly, — might the dead but slink 
To life back, — to the dregs once more would drink 
Each interloper, drain the humblest cup 
Fate mixes for humanity. 



228 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

The rush onward to the supreme is upper- 
most in the poet's mind in this poem. Though 
he does indulge in the refrain that there shall 
never be one lost good echoing the thought 
in "Charles Avison," the climax of his mood 
is in the contemplation of the evolutionary 
force of the soul which must leave Greek art 
behind and find new avenues of beauty: 

*'The Past indeed 
Is past, gives way before Life's best and last 
The all-including Future! What were life 
Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife 
Through the ambiguous Present to the goal 
Of some all-reconciling Future? Soul, 
Nothing has been which shall not bettered be 
Hereafter, — leave the root, by law's decree 
Whence springs the ultimate and perfect tree! 
Busy thee with unearthing root? Nay, cHmb — 
Quit trunk, branch, leaf and flower — reach, rest sublime 
Where frui'age ripens in the blaze of day.'* 

When it comes to the subject matter of 
poetry. Browning constantly insists that it 
should be the study of the human soul. A 
definite statement as to the range of subjects 
under this general material of poetry is put 
forth very early in his poetical career in 
*' Paracelsus" and it is all-inclusive. It is the 
passage where Aprile describes how universal 
he wished to make his sympathy as a poet. 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 229 

No one is to be left out of his all-embracing 
democracy. 

Such, then, are his general principles in 
regard to poetic development and subject 
matter. These do not touch upon the ques- 
tion so often discussed of the relative value 
of the subjective as against the objective poet. 
This point the poet considers in "Sordello," 
where he throws in his weight on the side 
of the objective poet. In the passage in the 
third book the poet, speaking in person, 
gives illustrations of three sorts of poetic 
composition : the dramatic, the descriptive and 
the meditative; the first belongs to the objec- 
tive, the second, not distinctively to either, 
and the third to the subjective manner of 
writing. The dramatic method is the most 
forceful, for it imparts the gift of seeing to 
others, while the descriptive and meditative 
merely tell what they saw, or, worse still, talk 
about it. 

Further indications of his allegiance to the 
dramatic form of poetry as the supreme one 
are found in his poems inspired by Shake- 
speare, "House" and "Shop," but we must 
turn to a pregnant bit of his prose in order 
to find his exact feeling upon the relations of 
the subjective and objective poet, together 
with a clear conception of what he meant by 



230 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

a dramatic poet, which was something more 
than Shakespeare's "holding the mirror up 
to nature." In his view the dramatic poet 
must have the vision of the seer as well as 
the penetration of a psychologist. He must 
hold the mirror up not only to nature, regarded 
as phenomena, but to the human soul, and 
he must perceive the relation of that human 
soul to the universal. He must in fact 
plunge beneath the surface of actions and 
events and bring forth to the light the psychic 
and cosmic causes of these things. The 
passage referred to in the "Introduction to 
the Shelley Letters" points out how in the 
evolution of poetry there will be the play 
and interplay of the subjective and the 
objective faculties upon each other, with the 
probable result of the arising of poets who 
will combine the two sorts of faculty. While 
Browning's own sympathy with the dramatic 
poet is as fully evident here as in the passage 
in "Sordello," he realizes, as perhaps he did 
not at that time, when he was himself breaking 
away from Shelley's influence, the value of 
the subjective method in carrying on the 
process of poetic evolution: 

"It would be idle to inquire, of these two kinds of poetic 
faculty in operation, which is the higher or even rarer en- 
dowment. If the subjective might seem to be the ultimate 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 231 

requirement of every age, the objective, in the strictest state, 
must still retain its original value. For it is with this word, 
as starting-point and basis alike, that we shall always have to 
concern ourselves: the world is not to be learned and thrown 
aside, but reverted to and relearned. The spiritual compre- 
hension may be infinitely subtilized, but the raw material it 
operates upon must remain. There may be no end of the 
poets who communicate to us what they see in an object with 
reference to their own individuality; what it was before they 
saw it, in reference to the aggregate human mind, will be as 
desirable to know as ever. Nor is there any reason why these 
two modes of poetic faculty may not issue hereafter from the 
same poet in successive perfect works, examples of which, 
according to what are now considered the exigencies of art, 
we have hitherto possessed in distinct individuals only. A 
mere running in of the one faculty upon the other is, of course, 
the ordinary circumstance. Far more rarely it happens that 
either is found so decidedly prominent and superior as to be 
pronounced comparatively pure: while of the perfect shield, 
with the gold and the silver side set up for all comers to 
challenge, there has yet been no instance. A tribe of suc- 
cessors (Homerides), working more or less in the same spirit, 
dwell on his discoveries and reinforce his doctrine; till, at 
unawares, the world is found to be subsisting wholly on the 
shadow of a reahty, on sentiments diluted from passions, on 
the tradition of a fact, the convention of a moral, the straw of 
last year's harvest. Then is the imperative call for the ap- 
pearance of another sort of poet, who shall at once replace this 
intellectual rumination of food swallowed long ago, by a supply 
of the fresh and Hving swathe; getting at new substance by 
breaking up the assumed wholes into parts of independent 
and unclassed value, careless of the unknown laws for recom- 
bining them (it will be the business of yet another poet 
to suggest those hereafter), prodigal of objects for men's outer 



232 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

and not inner sight; shaping for their uses a new and different 
creation from the last, which it displaces by the right of life 
over death, — to endure until, in the inevitable process, its 
very sufficiency to itself shall require, at length, an exposition 
of its affinity to something higher — when the positive yet 
confficting facts shall again precipitate themselves under a 
harmonizing law, and one more degree will be apparent for a 
poet to chmb in that mighty ladder, of which, however cloud- 
involved and undefined may glimmer the topmost step, the 
world dares no longer doubt that its gradations ascend. " 

If we measure Browning's own work by 
the poetic standards which he has himself 
set up in the course of that work, it is quite 
evident that he has on the whole lived up to 
them. He has shown himself to be an illus- 
tration of the evolutionary principles in which 
he believes by breaking away from all pre- 
vious standards of taste in poetry. The 
history of poetry in England has shown 
this to be a distinctive characteristic of all 
the greatest English poets. From Shake- 
speare down they have one and all run afoul 
of the critics whose special province seems to 
be to set up literary shibboleths which every 
genius is bent upon disregarding. When 
Spenser was inventing his stanza, verse critics 
were abject in their worship of hexameters, 
and their hatred of bald rhymes. Though 
these sticklers for classical forms could see 
clearly enough that Spenser was possessed of 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 233 

genius, they yet lamented the bhndness of 
one, who might have written hexameters, 
perversely exclaiming ''Why a God's name 
may not we as else the Greeks have the 
kingdom of our own language, and measure 
our accents by the sound, reserving quantity 
to the verse?" When Milton appears and 
finds blank verse the medium best suited to 
his subject, he comes up against the rhyming 
standards of his day and is forced to submit 
to the indignity of having his "Paradise 
Lost" "tagged with rhymes," as he expresses 
it, by Dryden, who graciously devoted his 
powers of rhyme to an improved version of 
the poem. Milton was actually obliged to 
defend himself in his preface to "Paradise 
Lost" for using blank verse, as Browning 
defends himself in the Epilogue to "Pacchiar- 
otto and How We Worked in Distemper" 
for writing "strong" verse instead of the 
"sweet" verse the critics demand of him. 

By the time the nineteenth century dawns 
the critics are safely intrenched in the editorial 
den, from which, shielded by any sort of shib- 
boleth they can get hold of, they may hurl 
forth their projectiles upon the unoffending 
head of the genius, who, with no chance of 
firing back in the open arena of the magazine, 
must either suffer in silence or take refuge 



234 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

in sarcastic slurs upon his critics in his 
poetry, for here hes the only chance of getting 
even without waiting for the whirligig of time 
to bring the public round to a recognition of 
the fact that he is the one who has in very 
truth, "fished the murex up." 

The caliber of man who could speak of 
"The Ode to Immortality" as "a most illegi- 
ble and unintelligible poem," or who wonders 
that any man in his senses could put his name 
to such a rhapsody as "Endymion," or who 
dismissed "Prometheus Unbound" with the 
remark that it was a melange of nonsense, 
cockney ism, poverty and pedantry, would 
hardly be expected to welcome "Sordello" 
with eflfusion. Even very intelligent people 
cracked unseemly jokes upon the appearance 
of "Sordello," and what wonder, for Brown- 
ing's British instinct for freedom carried him 
in this poem to the most extreme lengths. 
In "Pauline" he had allied himself with 
things famiUar to the English reader of poetry. 
Many of the allusions are classical and 
introduced with a rich musicalness that 
Shelley himseK might have envied. The 
reminiscences of Shelley would also come 
within the intellectual acreage of most of the 
cultured people of the time. And even in 
"Paracelsus," despite the unfamiliarity of the 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 235 

subject, there was music and imagery such as 
to Hnk the art with the admired poetic art 
of the day, but in "Sordello" all bounds are 
broken. 

No one but a delver in the byways of 
literature could, at that time, have been 
expected to know anything about Sordello; 
no one but a historian could have been 
expected to know about the complicated 
struggles of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines; 
no one but a philosopher about the tenden- 
cies, both political and literary, manifesting 
themselves in the direction of the awakening 
of democratic ideals in these pre-Dantean 
days; no one but a psychologist about the 
tortuous windings of Sordello's mind. 

Only by special searching into all these 
regions of knowledge can one to-day gain a 
complete grasp of the situation. He must 
patiently tread all the paths that Browning 
trod before he can enter into sympathy with 
the poet. Then he will crack no more jokes, 
but he will marvel at the mind which could 
wield all this knowledge with such consum- 
mate familiarity; he will grow ecstatic over 
the splendors of the poem, and will regret its 
redundancy not of diction so much but of 
detail and its amazing lack of organic unity. 

No one but a fanatic could claim that 



^36 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

''Sordello" is a success as an organic work of 
art. While the poet had a mastery of knowl- 
edge, thought and feehng, he did not have 
sufficient mastery of his own form to weld 
these together into a harmonious and con- 
vincing whole, such mastery as he, for exam- 
ple, shows in ''The Ring and the Book," 
though even in that there is some survival 
of the old redundancy. 

One feels when considering "Sordello" as a 
whole as if gazing upon a picture in which 
the perspective and the high lights and the 
shadows are not well related to each other. 
As great an abundance of detail is expended 
upon the less important as upon the more 
important fact, and while the details may be 
interesting enough in themselves, they dis- 
lodge more important affairs from the center 
of consciousness. It is, not to be too flippant, 
something like Alice's game of croquet in 
"Through the Looking Glass." When the 
hedgehog ball is nicely rolled up ready to be 
struck, the flamingo mallet walks off some- 
where else. 

There, then, in "Sordello" is perhaps the 
most remarkable departure from the accepted 
in poetic art that an Englishman has ever 
attempted. In its elements of failure, how- 
ever, it gave "a triumph's evidence," to use 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 237 

the poet's own phrase, "of the fulness of the 
days." In this poem he had thrown down 
the gauntlet. His subject matter was not 
to be like that of any other poet, nor was his 
form to be like that of any other poet. He 
discarded the flowing music of " Pauhne " and 
of " Paracelsus." His allusions were no longer 
to be classic, but to be directly related to 
whatever subject he had in hand; his style 
was also to be forth-right and related to his 
subject, strong, idiomatic, rugged, even jolting 
if need be, or noble, sweeping along in large 
rhythms or couched in rare forms of sym- 
bolism, but, whatever it was to be, always 
different from what had been. 

All he required at the time when "Bordello" 
appeared was to find that form in which 
he could so unify his powers that his poems 
would gain the organic completeness neces- 
sary to a work of art. No matter what new 
regions an artist may push into he must dis- 
cover the law of being of this new region. 
Unless he does, his art will not convince, but 
the moment he does, all that was not con- 
vincing falls into its right place. He becomes 
the master of his art, and relates the new 
elements in such a way that their rightness 
and their beauty, if not immediately recog- 
nized, are sure sooner or later to be recog- 



238 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

nized by the evolving appreciator, who is the 
necessary complement, by the way, of the 
evolving artist. Before "Sordello" Brown- 
ing had tried three other forms; the subjective 
narrative in "Pauline," the dramatic poem in 
"Paracelsus," a regular drama in "Strafford," 
which however runs partly parallel with 
" Sordello " in composition. He had also done 
two or three short dramatic monologues. 

He evidently hoped that the regular drama 
would prove to be the form most congenial to 
him, for he kept on persistently in that form 
for nearly ten years, wrote much magnificent 
poetry in it and at times attained a grandeur 
of dramatic utterance hardly surpassed ex- 
cept in the master of all dramatists, Shake- 
speare. But while he has attained a very 
genuine success in this form, it is not the 
success of the popular acting drama. His 
dramas are to-day probably being left farther 
and farther aside every moment in the present 
exaggerated demands for characters in action, 
or perhaps it might be nearer the truth to 
say clothes horses in action. Besides, the 
drama of action in character, which is the 
type of drama introduced into English litera- 
ture by Browning, has reached a more perfect 
development in other hands. Ibsen's dramas 
are preeminently dramas of action in char- 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 239 

acter, but the action moves with such rapidity 
that the audience is almost cheated into think- 
ing they are the old thing over again — ^that is, 
dramas of characters in action. 

Browning's characters in his dramas are 
presented with a completeness of psycho- 
logical analysis which makes them of para- 
mount interest to those few who can and 
like to listen to people holding forth to any 
length on the stage, and with superb actors, 
who can give every subtlest change of mood, 
a Browning drama furnishes an opportunity 
for the utmost intensity of pleasure. Still, 
one cannot help but feel that the impression- 
istic psychology of Ibsen reaches a pinnacle 
of dramatic art not attained by Browning in 
his plays, delightful in character portrayal 
as they are, and not upon any account to have 
been missed from dramatic literature. 

In the dramatic monologue Browning found 
just that form which would focus his forces, 
bringing them into the sort of relationship 
needed to reveal the true law of being for his 
new region of poetic art. 

If we inquire just why this form was the 
true medium for the most perfect expression 
of his genius, I think we may answer that 
in it, as he has developed it, is given an op- 
portunity for the legitimate exercise of his 



240 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

mental subtlety. Through the voice of one 
speaker he can portray not only the speaker 
but one or more other characters, and at 
the same time show the scene setting, and all 
without any direct description. On the other 
hand, his tendency to redundancy, so marked 
when he is making a character reveal only 
his own personality, is held in check by the 
necessity of using just those words and turns 
of expression and dwelling upon just those 
details which will make each character stand 
out distinctly, and at the same time bring 
the scene before the reader. 

The people in his dramatic monologues live 
before us by means of a psychology as impres- 
sionistic as that of Ibsen's in his plays. The 
effect is the same as that in a really great 
impressionistic painting. Nature is revealed 
far more distinctly — the thing of lights and 
shadows, space and movement — than in 
pictures bent upon endless details of form. 
"My Last Duchess" is one among many 
fine examples of his method in monologue. 
In that short poem we are made to see what 
manner of man is the duke, what manner of 
woman the duchess. We see what has been 
the duke's past, what is to be his future, 
also the present scene, as the duke stands in 
the hall of his palace talking to an ambassador 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 241 

from the count who has come to arrange a 
marriage with the duke for the count's 
daughter. Besides all this a glimpse of the 
ambassador's attitude of mind is given. This 
is done by an absolutely telling choice of words 
and by an organic relationing of the different 
elements. The law of his genius asserts itself. 

Browning's own ideal of the poet who 
makes others see was not completely realized 
until he had perfected a form which would 
lend itself most perfectly to the manner of 
thing which he desired to make others see — 
namely, the human soul in all its possible 
manifestations of feeling and mood, good, bad, 
and indifferent, from the uninspired organist 
who struggles with a mountainous fugue to 
the inspired improvisor whose soul ascends 
to God on the wings of his music, from the 
unknown sensitive painter who cannot bear 
to have his pictures the subject of criticism 
or commerce to the jolly life-loving Era 
Lippo, from the jealous, vindictive woman of 
"The Laboratory" to the vision-seeing Pom- 
pilia, from Ned Bratts to Bishop Blougram, 
and so on — so many and wonderful that 
custom cannot state their infinite variety. 

Consistent, so far, with his own theories 
we find the work of Browning to be. He also 
follows his ideal in the discarding of classical 



242 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

allusion and illustration. Part of his dictum 
that the form should express the thought 
is shown in his habitual fitting of his allusions 
to the subject he is treating. By this means 
he produces his atmosphere and brings the 
scene clearly before us; witness his constant 
references to Molinos and his influence in 
"The Ring and the Book," an influence which 
was making itself felt in all classes of society 
at the time when the actual tragedy portrayed 
in the poem occurred. This habit, of course, 
brings into his poetry a far wider range of 
allusions unfamiliar to his contemporaries 
than is to be found in other Victorian poets, 
and makes it necessary that these should be 
"looked up" before an adequate enjoyment 
of their fitness is possible. Hence the Brown- 
ing societies, so often held up to ridicule by 
the critics, who blindly prefer to show their 
superior attitude of mind in regard to every- 
thing they do not know, and growl about 
his obscurity, to welcoming any movement 
which means an increase of general culture. 
The Browning societies have not only done 
much to make Browning's unusual allusions 
common matters of knowledge, but they have 
helped to keep alive a taste for all poetry in 
an age when poetry has needed all the friendly 
support it could get. 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 243 

All great poets lead the ordinary mind to 
unfamiliar regions of knowledge and thereby 
to fresh planes of enjoyment. That Browning 
has outdone all other poets in this particular 
should be to his honor, not to his dispraise. 

In one very marked direction, however, he 
is not a perfect exemplar of his own theories — 
that is, he is not always consistently dramatic. 
He belongs to that order of poets described 
by himself in the Shelley Introduction as 
neither completely subjective nor completely 
objective, but with the two faculties at times 
running in upon each other. He is often 
absolutely objective in his expression of a 
mood or a feeling, but the moment the mood 
takes upon it the tinge of thought we begin 
to feel Browning himself. 

The fundamental principles upon which he 
bases his own solution of the problems of 
existence are seen to crop out, colored, it is 
true, by the personality of the speaker, but 
yet traceable to their source in the mental 
make up of Browning himself. It may well 
be that Browning has come so near to the 
ultimate truth discoverable by man in his 
fundamental principles that they are actually 
universal truths, to be found lying deep down 
at the roots of all more partial expressions, just 
as gravitation, conservation of energy, evo- 



244 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

lution underlie every phenomena of nature, 
and therefore when a Pope in ''The Ring 
and the Book," a Prince Hohenstiel-Swangau, 
a Bishop Blougram, a Cleon or a John in 
"The Death in the Desert," give utterance 
to their views upon Ufe, they are bound to 
touch from one or another angle the basic 
principles of Ufe common to all humanity 
as well as to the poet — the center within 
us all where "truth abides in fulness." 

This would seem an even more complete 
fusing of the two faculties in one poet than 
that spoken of by Browning, where a poet 
would issue successive works, in some of them 
the one faculty and in some of them the other 
faculty being supreme. 

That Browning was, to a certain extent, a 
poet of this third order of which he prophesied 
is true, for he has written a number of poems 
like "La Saisiaz," "Reverie," various of his 
prologues and epilogues which are purely 
subjective in content. There are also sub- 
jective passages in the midst of other poems, 
like those in "Sordello," "Prince Hohenstiel," 
the "Parleyings," etc. If we place such a 
poem as "Reverie" side by side with "Fra 
Lippo Lippi" we see well-nigh perfect illus- 
trations of the two faculties as they existed 
in the one poet. Browning. On the other 



ART SHIBBOLETHS U5 

hand, in those poems where the thought, as 
I have said, suggests Browning, in the speech 
of his characters he has something of the 
quahty of what Browning calls the subjective 
poet of modern classification. "Gifted like 
the objective poet, with the fuller perception 
of nature and man, he is impelled to embody 
the thing he perceives, not so much with refer- 
ence to the many below as to the One above 
him, the supreme intelligence which appre- 
hends all things in their absolute truth, an 
ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially 
attained, by the poet's soul." 

Browning may be said to have carried to 
its flood tide the "Liberal Movement in 
English Literature," as Courthope calls it, 
inaugurated at the dawn of the century by 
the Lake School, which reacted against the 
correct school of Dry den and Pope. Along 
with the earlier poets of the century he 
shared lack of appreciation at the hands of 
critics in general. The critics had been bred 
in the school of the eighteenth century, and 
naturally would be incapable of understanding 
a man whose thought was permeated with 
the doctrines of evolution, then an unknown 
quantity except to the elect in scientific 
circles, and not to become the possession of 
the thinking world at large until beyond the 



246 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

middle of the century; whose soul was full 
of the ardor of democracy, shown not only 
in his choice and treatment of subjects, but 
in his reckless independence of all the shibbo- 
leths of the past; and whose liberalness in the 
treatment of moral and reUgious problems 
was such as to scandahze many in an age 
when the law forbade that a man should 
marry his deceased wife's sister, and when 
the Higher Criticism of the Bible had not yet 
migrated to England from Germany; and, 
finally, whose style was everything that was 
atrocious because entirely different from any- 
thing they had seen before. 

The century had to grow up to him. It is 
needless to say that it did so. Just as out 
of the turmoil of conflicting scientific and 
religious thought has emerged a serene belief 
in man's spiritual destiny, so out of the turmoil 
of conflicting schools of criticism has arisen a 
perception of the value of the new, the 
original, the different in art. Critics begin to 
apply the principles of evolution to their 
criticism as Browning applied it to his art, 
with the result that they no longer measure 
by past standards of art but by relating the 
art to the Hfe of the time in its various mani- 
festations, not forgetting that the poet or 
the dramatist may have a further vision of 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 247 

what is to come than any other man of his 
age. 

The people first, for the most part, found 
out that here in Browning's work was a new 
force, and calmly formed themselves into 
groups to study what manner of force it might 
be, regardless of the sneers of newspaperdom 
and conventional academies. And gradually 
to the few appreciative critics of the early 
days have been added one authoritative voice 
after another until the chorus of praise has 
become a large one, and Browning, though 
later than any great poet of the century, is 
coming into his own. 

In a certain chart of English literature 
with which I am acquainted, wherein the 
poets are graphically represented in mountain 
ranges with peaks of various heights, Tenny- 
son is shown as the towering peak of the 
Victorian Era, while Browning is a sturdy 
but much lower peak with a blunted top. 
This is quite symbolic of the general attitude 
toward Browning at the end of the century, 
for, with all the appreciation, there has been 
on the part of authority a disinclination to 
assign to him the chief place among the poets 
of the Victorian Era. Courthope, who most 
of the time preserves a remarkable reticence 
upon Browning, voices this general attitude 



248 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

in a remark ventured upon in one of his 
lectures in 1900. He says: 

"No one who is capable of appreciating 
genius will refuse to admire the powers of 
this poet, the extent of his sympathy and 
interest in external things, the boldness of 
his invention, the energy of his analysis, the 
audacity of his experiments. But so abso- 
lutely does he exclude all consideration for 
the reader from his choice of subject, so 
arbitrarily, in his treatment of his themes, 
does he compel his audience to place them- 
selves at his own point of view, that the life 
of his art depends entirely upon his own 
individuality. Should future generations be 
less inclined than our own to surrender their 
imagination to his guidance, he will not be 
able to appeal to them through that element 
of life which lies in the Universal." 

To the present writer this seems simply 
like a confession on Courthope's part that 
he was unable to perceive in Browning the 
elements of the Universal which are most 
assuredly there, and which were fully recog- 
nized by a Scotch writer, Dawson, at the 
same time that Courthope was questioning 
his power to hold coming generations. 

"The fashions of the world may change," 
writes Dawson, "and the old doubts may 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 249 

wear themselves out and sink like shadows 
out of sight in the morning of a stronger 
faith; but even so the world will still 
turn to the finer poems of Browning for 
intellectual stimulus, for the purification of 
pity and of pathos, for the exaltation of 
hope. 

"Or if the darkness still thickens, all the 
more will men turn to this strong man of the 
race, who has wrestled and prevailed; who has 
illumined with imaginative insight the deepest 
problems of the ages ; who has made his poetry 
not merely the vehicle of pathos, passion, 
tenderness, fancy, and imagination, but also 
of the most robust and masculine thought. 
He has written lyrics which must charm all 
who love, epics which must move all who 
act, songs which must cheer all who suffer, 
poems which must fascinate all who think; 
and when 'Time hath sundered shell from 
pearl,' however stern may be the scrutiny, it 
may be said that there will remain enough 
of Robert Browning to give him rank among 
the greatest of poets, and secure for him the 
sure reward of fame." 

But it is to France we must go for the surest 
authoritative note — that land of the Acad- 
emy and correct taste which hums and hahs 
over its own Immortals in proverbially unpen- 



250 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

etrating conclave. No less a man than Taine 
declares that Browning stands first among 
English poets — ''the most excellent where 
excellence is greatness, the most gifted where 
genius is a common dower." 

While there can be no doubt that Browning 
outdid all the other great poets of his time 
in *' azure feats," in developing an absolutely 
self-centered ideal of art, which is yet so true 
to the ultimate tendencies of the century, 
indeed to those of all time, for evolution and 
democracy are henceforth the torch-bearers 
of the human soul — each of the other 
half-dozen or so greatest poets had dis- 
tinct and independent individualities which 
were more nearly the outcome of the cur- 
rent tendencies of the time than Brown- 
ing's. 

Tennyson was equally familiar with the 
thought and much more familiar with the 
politics of the day, but there is an infinite 
difference in their attitude. Browning, if I 
may be excused for quoting one of Shake- 
speare's most abused phrases, rides over the 
century like a "naked new-born babe striding 
the blast." Tennyson ambles through it on 
a palfrey which has a tendency to flounder 
into every slough of despond it comes to. 
This may seem to be putting it rather too 




Alfred Tennyson 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 251 

strongly, but is it not true? Browning has 
the vision belonging to the latest child of 
time. He never follows; he leads. With his 
eyes fixed upon a far-off future where man 
shall be man at last, he faces every problem 
with the intrepidity of an (Edipus confronting 
the Sphynx. The mystery of its riddles has 
no terrors for him. It is given to him as to 
few others to see the ineffable beauty of life's 
mystery, the promise it holds out of eternal 
joy. While he frequently discourses upon 
the existence of evil, he never for a moment 
admits any doubt into his own utmost soul 
of the beneficent part evil is meant to play 
in the molding of human destinies. Mr. 
Santayana has called him a barbarous poet. 
In a certain sense he is, if to be born among 
the first on a new plane of psychic perception 
where of no account become the endless 
metaphysical meanderings of the intellect, 
which cry "proof, proof, where there can be 
no proof," is barbarous. It was doubtless 
largely owing to this power of vision reminding 
us again somewhat of the child's in Maeter- 
linck's "Les Aveugles" which kept Browning 
from tinkering in the half-measures of the 
jKDlitical leaders of his time. His plane is 
not unlike that of his own Lazarus, about 
whom the Arab physician says: 



252 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

"The man is witless of the size, the sum. 
The value in proportion of all things. 
Or whether it be little or be much. 
Discourse to him of prodigious armament 
Assembled to besiege his city now. 
And of the passing of a mule with gourds — 
'Tis one ! Then take it on the other side. 
Speak of some trifling fact, — he will gaze rapt 
With stupor at its very httleness, 
(For as I see) as if in that indeed 
He caught prodigious import, whole results; 
And so will turn to us the bystanders 
In ever the same stupor (note this point) 
That we, too, see not with his opened eyes. " 

The import of an event is everything. 
Large imports may lurk more surely in the 
awakening of some obscure soul than in the 
pageantry of law bringing a tardy and wholly 
inadequate measure of justice to humanity. 
Though Tennyson talks of the "far-off divine 
event" he has no burning conviction of it 
and does not ride toward it with triumph 
in his eye and flaming joy in his soul. As he 
ambles along, steeping himself in the science 
of the time, its revelations make him nervous; 
he falls into doubt from which he can only 
extricate himself by holding on to belief, 
a very different thing from Browning's 
vision. 

Thus it happens that Tennyson voices the 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 253 

feelings of an immense class of cultured people, 
who have gone through the century in the 
same ambling fashion, a prey to its fears, 
intellectual enough to see the truths of 
science, but not spiritual enough to see the 
import of the dawn of the new day. 

Tennyson, then, quite of and in his time, 
would desire above all things to appeal to 
it as it appealed to him. He waxes enthusi- 
astic over conventional politics, he treats his 
social problems so entirely in accordance 
with the conventions of the day that they 
are not problems at all, and he is quite in 
love with the beauty of aristocratic society, 
though he occasionally descends to the people 
for a subject. These are all entirely suffi- 
cient reasons for his popularity as a poet 
during his life, further emphasized by the 
added fact that having no subject matter 
(that is thought-content) wherewith to startle 
the world by strangeness, he took the wiser 
part of delighting them with his exquisite 
music. 

Though so satisfactory a representative of 
his times, he did outrage one of the shibbo- 
leths of the critics in his efforts to find a new 
and richer music than poets had before used 
by bringing scientific imagery into his verse. 
Of all the absurd controversies indulged in 



254 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

by critics, the most absurd is that fought out 
around the contention that science and poetry 
cannot be made to harmonize. Wordsworth 
was keen enough to see this before the rest 
of the world and prophesied in the preface to 
his ''Lyrical Ballads" that science would one 
day become the closest of alhes to poetry, 
and Tennyson was brilliant enough to seize 
the new possibilities in scientific language 
with a realization that nature imagery might 
almost be made over by the use in describing 
it of scientific epithets. A famous illustra- 
tion of the happy effects he produced by these 
means is in the lines 'Move eastward happy 
Earth and round again to-night." His obser- 
vation of Nature, moreover, had a scientific 
accuracy, which made possible far more deli- 
cate and individual descriptions of Nature's 
aspects than had been produced before. It 
was also a happy thought for him to weave 
so much of his poetry around the Arthurian 
legends. Beautiful in themselves, they came 
nearer home than classical or Italian legends, 
and, when made symbolic of an ideal which 
must appeal to the heart of every cultured 
Englishman, who regarded himseK as a sort 
of prototype of the blameless King Arthur, 
and whose grief at the failure of the social 
fabric planned by him would be as poignant 



ART SHIBBOLETHS ^55 

as that of the King himself, they carried with 
them a romantic and irresistible attraction. 

The reasons why Tennyson should appeal 
especially to the nineteenth century cultured 
and highly respectable Englishman far out- 
weighed any criticisms that might be made 
by critics on his departure from poetic cus- 
toms of the past. He pleased the highest 
powers in the land, became Laureate and later 
Lord Tennyson. He will therefore always 
remain the poet most thoroughly representa- 
tive of that e^ecial sort of beauty belonging 
to a social order which has reached a climax 
of refinement and intelligence, but which, 
through its very self-satisfaction, cuts itself 
ofif from a perception of the true value of the 
new forces coming into play in the on-rushing 
stream of social development. 

The other poets who divide with Browning 
and Tennyson the highest honors of the 
Victorian Era are Landor, Arnold, Rossetti, 
Swinburne, Morris, Mrs. Browning, George 
Meredith. 

Landor and Arnold preserved more than 
any of the others a genuine classical aroma in 
their verse, and on this account have always 
been delighted in by a few. After all, the 
people may not immediately accept a poet of 
too great independence, but they are least of 



256 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

all likely to grow enthusiastic over anything 
reactionary either in style or thought. Ro- 
mantic elements of not too startling a charac- 
ter win the favor of most readers. 

Though classic in style both these poets 
reflected phases of the century's thought. 
Landor differed from Browning in the fact 
that he frequently expressed himself vigor- 
ously upon the subject of current politics. 
His political principles were not of the most 
advanced type, however. He believed in the 
notion of a free society, but seems to have 
thought the best way of attaining it would be 
a commonwealth in which the wise should 
rule, and see that the interests of all should 
be secured. Still his insistence upon liberty, 
however old-fashioned his ideas of the means 
by which it should be maintained, puts him in 
the line of the democratic march of the century. 

Swinburne calls him his master, and repre- 
sents himself in verse as having learned 
m^y wise and gracious things of him, but his 
thought was not suflSiciently progressive to 
triumph over the classicism of his style in 
an age of romantic poetry, though there will 
always be those who hold on to the shibboleth 
that, after all, the classic is the real thing in 
poetry, never realizing that where the roman- 
tic is old enough, it, too, becomes classic. 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 257 

Matthew Arnold stands in poetry where 
men Hke Huxley and Clifford stood in science, 
who, Childe-Roland like, came to the dark 
tower, calmly put the slug horn to their lips 
and blew a blast of courage. Science had 
undermined their belief in a future life as 
well as destroying the revealed basis of moral 
action. In such a man the intellectual 
nature overbalances the intuitional, and when 
inherited belief based on authority is de- 
stroyed, there is nothing but the habit of 
morality left. 

Arnold has had the sympathy of those who 
could no longer believe in their revealed 
religion, but who loved it and regretted its 
passing away from them. He gives expres- 
sion to this feeling in lines like these: 

"The sea of faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. 
Retreating, to the breath 
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world. " 

The regret for something beautiful that is 
gone is capable of exquisite poetic treatment, 
but it is not an abiding note of the century. 
It represents only one phase of its thought, 



^58 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

and that a transcient one, because it could 
be felt with poignancy only by those whose 
lives were rudely shaken by the destruction 
of the ideal in which they had been bred and 
in which they devoutly believed. Arnold's 
sympathetic treatment of this phase of doubt 
seems, however, to have been of incalculable 
service to those who felt as he did. It 
softened the anguish of the shock to have not 
only the beauty of the past dwelt upon, but 
to have the beauty of courage in the face 
of a destroyed ideal erected into a new ideal 
for living brave and noble lives. In "Stanzas 
from the Grande Chartreuse" is a fine example 
of the beauty which may be imparted to a 
mood as melancholy as could well be imagined : 

"Not as their friend, or child, I speak! 

But as, on some far northern strand, 
Thinldng of his own Gods, a Greek 

In pity and mournful awe might stand 
Before some fallen Runic stone — 
For both were faiths, and both are gone. 

"Wandering between two worlds, one dead 

The other powerless to be born. 
With nowhere yet to rest my head. 

Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. 
Their faith, my tears, the world deride — 
I come to shed them at their side. '* 

Such hope as he has to offer comes out in 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 259 

stanzas like the following, but all is dependent 
upon strenuous living: 

*'No, no! the energj^ of life may be 
Kept on after the grave, but not begun; 
And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife. 
From strength to strength advancing — only he. 
His soul well-knit, and all his battle won. 
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal hfe. " 

Nor shall better days on earth come with- 
out struggle since life 

*'Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high 
Uno'erleaped Mountains of Necessity, 
Sparing us narrower margin than we deem. 
Nor will that day dawn at a human nod. 
When, bursting through the network, superposed 
By selfish occupation — plot and plan. 
Lust, avarice, envy-liberated man, 
All difference with his fellow-mortal closed, 
Shall be left standing face to face with God. " 

Though Arnold was sternly criticised he had 
before the end of the century been accorded 
his proper place as a poet, which was that of 
the chief poet between the greatest lights 
of the century, Browning and Tennyson and 
the pre-Raphaelite group. Gosse, with more 
penetration than can always be accorded to 
him, declares that "His devotion to beauty, 
the composure, simplicity and dignity of his 



260 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

temper, and his deep moral sincerity gave to 
his poetry a singular charm which may prove 
as durable as any element in modern verse." 

The phase of romanticism carried to its 
climax by the pre-Raphaelite poets Rossetti 
and his sister, Morris and Swinburne had, like 
the work of Tennyson, its full recognition, in 
its own time, because these poets, like him, 
have put into exquisite music romantic sub- 
jects derived both from the classics and from 
mediaeval legend. The new note of sensuous- 
ness, due largely to the Italian influence of 
Rossetti, with his sensuous temperament, his 
intensity of passion and his love of art, and 
also in Morris and Swinburne to their pagan 
feeling, one of the elements inaugurated by 
the general breaking down of orthodox relig- 
ious ideals through the encroachments of 
science, does not seem to have affected their 
popularity. 

As there were those who would sympathize 
with the Tennysonian attitude toward doubt, 
and those who would sympathize with Mat- 
thew Arnold's, there were others to feel like 
Swinburne, pantheistic, and, like Morris, ut- 
terly hopeless of a future, while others again 
might criticise the pagan feeling, but, with their 
inheritance of beauty from Tennyson and his 
predecessors of the dawn of the century, would 



r. 




A. C. Swinburne 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 261 

delight in these new developments of the 
romantic spirit. 

Ruskin is said to have been the original 
inspirer of these four poets, though Fitz- 
Gerald's "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam was 
not without its influence. But as Edmund 
Gosse says, "The attraction of the French 
romances of chivalry for WilUam Morris, of 
Tuscan painting for D. G. Rossetti, of the spirit 
of English Gothic architecture for Christina 
Rossetti, of the combination of all these with 
Greek and Elizabethan elements for Swin- 
burne, were to be traced back to start — 
words given by the prophetic author of the 
"Seven Lamps of Architecture.'" 

Though the first books of this group of 
poets, the "Defence of Guenevere" (1858), 
"Goblin Market," "Early Italian Poets," 
"Queen Mother and Rosamond" (1861), did 
not make any impression on the pubhc, with 
the publication of Swinburne's "Atalanta in 
Calydon" an interest was awakened which 
reached a climax with the publication of Ros- 
setti's poems in 1870. Rossetti had thrown 
these poems into his wife's grave, as the world 
knows, but was prevailed upon to have them 
recovered and published. 

In the success of this group was vindicated 
at last the principles of the naturalists of the 



262 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

dawn of the century. Here was a mixture of 
color, of melody, of mysticism, of sensuousness, 
of elaboration of form which carried original- 
ity and independence as far as it could well 
go in a direction which painted life primarily 
from the outside. But when this brilliant 
culminating flash of the early school of Coler- 
idge and Keats began to burn itself out, there 
was Tennyson, who might be called the con- 
servative wing of the romantic movement, 
dominant as ever, and Browning, the militant 
wing, advanced from his mid-century obscurity 
into a flood-tide of appreciation which was 
to bear him far onward toward literary pre- 
eminence, placing him among the few greatest 
names in literature. 

The originality of the pre - Raphaelites 
grew out of their welding of romantic, clas- 
sical, and mediseval elements, tempered in 
each case by the special mental attitude of 
the poet. 

Rossetti and his brother artists, Millais 
and Holman Hunt, who founded the pre- 
Raphaelite brotherhood of painters, pledged 
themselves to the fundamental principle laid 
down by Rossetti in the little magazine they 
started called the Germ. This new creed was 
simple enough and ran: "The endeavor held 
in view throughout the writings on art will 



ART SHIBBOLETHS' 263 

be to encourage and enforce an entire adherence 
to the simpKcity of Nature." 

In their interpretation and development of 
this simple principle, artists and the poets who 
joined them differentiated from one another 
often to a wide extent. In Rosetti, it becomes 
an adoration of the beauty of woman ex- 
pressed in ultra-sensuous though not in sensual 
imagery, combined with an atmosphere of reUg- 
ious wonder such as one finds in mediaeval 
poets, of which *'The Blessed Damozel" 
stands as a typical example. In it, as one 
appreciator has said, all the qualities of 
Rossetti's poetry are found. " He speaks alter- 
nately Uke a seer and an artist; one who is 
now bewitched with the vision of beauty, and 
now is caught up into Paradise, where he 
hears unutterable things. To him the spir- 
itual world is an intense reality. He hears 
the voices, he sees the presences of the super- 
natural. As he mourns beside the river of 
his sorrow, like Ezekiel, he has his visions of 
winged and wheeling glory, and leaning over 
the ramparts of the world his gaze is fixed on 
the uncovered mysteries of a world to come. 
There is no poet to whom the supernatural 
has been so much alive. Religious doubt 
he seems never to have felt. But the temper 
of religious wonder, the old, childhke, monk- 



^64 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

ish attitude of awe and faith in the presence 
of the unseen, is never absent in him. The 
artistic force of his temperament drives him 
to the worship of beauty; the poetic and rehg- 
ious forces to the adoration of mystery." 

To Swinburne the simphcity of nature in- 
cluded the utmost lengths to which eroti- 
cism could go. Upon this ground he has been 
severely censured and he has had an unfortu- 
nate influence upon scores and scores of 
younger writers who have seemed to think 
that the province of the poet is to decry the 
existence of sincere affection, and who in their 
turn have exercised actual mischief in lowering 
social standards. 

This is not all of Swinburne, however. His 
superb metrical power is his chief contribution 
to the originality of this group, and when he 
developed away from his nauseating eroticism, 
he could charm as no one else with his delicious 
music, though it often be conspicuous for its 
lack of richness in thought. 

His fate has been somewhat different from 
that of most poets. When his "Atalanta in 
Calydon" was pubHshed it was received with 
enthusiasm, but the volumes overweighted 
with eroticism which followed caused a fierce 
controversy, and many have not even yet 
discovered that this was only one phase of 



ART SHIBBOLETHS ^Q5 

Swinburne's art, and that, unfortunate as it 
is in many respects, it was a phase of the 
century's Ufe which must find its expression 
in art if that Hfe is to be completely given, 
and that it was a passing phase Swinburne 
himself proved in the development of other 
phases shown in his interest in current political 
situations, his enthusiasm for Italy and his 
later expressions of high moral ideals, as well 
as in a quasi-religious attitude of mind, not 
so far from that of Emerson, himself, in 
which strong emphasis is placed upon the 
importance of the individual, and upon the 
unity of God and man. 

There is moral courage and optimism in 
the face of doubt of a high order in the fol- 
lowing lines: 

— "Are ye not weary and faint not by the way 
Seeing night by night devoured of day by day. 
Seeing hour by hour consumed in sleepless fire? 
Sleepless; and ye too, when shall ye, too sleep? 
— We are weary in heart and head, in hands and feet. 
And surely more than all things sleep were sweet. 
Than all things save the inexorable desire 

Which whoso knoweth shall neither faint nor weep. 

"Is this so sweet that one were fain to follow? 
Is this so sure when all men's hopes are hollow, 
Even this your dream, that by much tribulation 

Ye shall make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks 
straight? 



^QQ BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

— Nay though our life were blind, our death were fruitless, 
Not therefore were the whole world's high hope rootless; 
But man to man, nation would turn to nation, 

And the old hfe Uve, and the old great word be great. " 

But Swinburne in his farthest reaches of 
pantheistic aspiration is to be seen in a poem 
Uke "Hertha": 

"I am that which began; 

Out of me the years roll; 
Out of me God and man; 
I am equal and whole; 
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the 
soul. 

"The tree many-rooted 

That swells to the sky 

With frondage red-fruited 

The Hfe- tree am I; 

In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves; ye shall live 
and not die. 

"But the Gods of your fashion 

That take and that give. 
In their pity and passion 
That scourge and forgive. 
They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they 
shall die and not Kve. 

"My own blood is what stanches 

The wounds in my bark: 
Stars caught in my branches 
Make day of the dark. 
And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out 
their fires as a spark. " 




Dante Gabriel Rossetti 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 267 

Morris's interpretation of pre-Raphaelite 
tenets took him into mediaeval legend and the 
classics for his subject matter. In his first vol- 
ume, "The Defence of Guenevere and Other 
Poems," he came into competition with Ten- 
nyson, who was at the same time issuing 
his Arthurian legends. The polish of Tenny- 
son's verse, as well as its symbolical meaning 
for the time, was more acceptable than the 
actual return to the nature of the fifteenth 
century, and this the first volume from a 
pre-Raphaelite was hardly noticed by the 
critics. Morris sulked within his literary 
tents for ten years before he again appeared, 
this time with "The Life and Death of Jason" 
(1867), which immediately became popular. 
Later came the "Earthly Paradise." These 
tales, in verse noble and simple, in style recall- 
ing the tales of Chaucer, yet with a charm 
all their own, in which the real men and 
women of Chaucer give place to types, have 
been the delight of those who hke to find 
in poetry a dreamland of romance where 
they may enjoy themselves far from the 
problems and toils of everyday life. He 
diflFers from all the other poets of this group 
in his lack of religious hope. His mind was 
of the type that could not stand up against 
the undermining influences of the age: hence 



268 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

world-weariness and despair are the con- 
stantly recurring notes. 

Mrs. Browning far outdistanced her hus- 
band in the early days in popularity. She 
pleased the people by her social enthusiasm, 
a characteristic more marked in her verse 
than in that of any of the poets mentioned. 
The critics have found many faults in her 
style, mainly those growing out of an impas- 
sioned nature which carried her at times 
beyond the realm of perfectly balanced art. 
But even an English critic of the conservatism 
of Edmund Gosse could at last admit that 
"In some of her lyrics and more rarely in her 
sonnets she rose to heights of passionate 
humanity which place her only just below the 
great poets of her country." 

Contemporary criticism of "Aurora Leigh," 
which was certainly a departure both in form 
and matter from the accepted standards, was, 
on the whole, just. The Quarterly Review 
in 1862 said of it; "This * Aurora Leigh' is a 
great poem. It is a wonder of art. It will 
live. No large audience will it have, but 
it will have audience; and that is more than 
most poems have. To those who know what 
poetry is and in what struggles it is born — 
how the great thoughts justify themselves — 
this work will be looked upon as one of the 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 269 

wonders of the age." Mrs. Browning re- 
sembles her husband in the fact that she does 
not fit into the main Hne of evokition of the 
romantic school, but is an individual mani- 
festation of the romantic spirit, showing 
almost as great freedom from the trammels of 
accepted romanticism as Browning does. 

The writer of the century whose experience 
as a novelist almost paralleled that of Brown- 
ing as poet was Meredith. Because of his 
psychological analysis and the so-called ob- 
scurity of his style, he waited many years for 
recognition and finally was accepted as one 
of the most remarkable novelists of the age. 
His poetry, showing similar tendencies, and 
overshadowed by his novels, has not yet 
emerged into the light of universal appre- 
ciation. One finds it even ignored altogether 
in the most recent books of English literature, 
yet he is the author of one of the most remark- 
able series of sonnets in the English language, 
"Modern Love," presenting, as it does, a 
vivid picture of domestic decadence which 
forms a strange contrast to Rossetti's sonnets, 
**The House of Life," indicating how many 
and various have been the forces at work 
during the nineteenth century in the disinte- 
grating and molding of social ideals. Mere- 
dith writes of "Hiding the Skeleton". 



^70 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

"At dinner she is hostess, I am host. 
Went the feast ever cheerfuUer? She keeps 
The topic over intellectual deeps 
In buoyancy afloat. They see no ghost. 
With sparkling surface-eyes we ply the ball: 
It is in truth a most contagious game; 
Hiding the Skeleton shall be its name. 
Such play as this the devils might appall. 
But here's the greater wonder; in that we, 
Enamor'd of our acting and our wits. 
Admire each other Hke true hypocrites. 
Warm-Hghted glances, Love's Ephemeral, 
Shoot gayly o'er the dishes and the wine. 
We waken envy of our happy lot. 
Fast sweet, and golden, shows our marriage-knot. 
Dear guests, you now have seen Love's corpse-Hght 
shine!" 

Rossetti writes "Lovesight": 

"When do I see thee most, beloved one? 
When in the Hght the spirits of mine eyes 
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize 

The worship of that Love through thee made known? 

Or when, in the dusk hours (we two alone), 
Close-kiss'd and eloquent of still repKes 
Thy twiHght — hidden gUmmering visage hes, 

And my soul only sees thy soul its own? 
O love, my love! if I no more should see 
Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, 

Nor image of thine eyes iu any spring, — 

How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope* 
The ground-whirl of the perish' d leaves of Hope, 

The wind of Death's imperishable wing? " 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 271 

Browning's criticism of painting was evi- 
dently much influenced by the pre-Raphaehtes. 
Their admiration for the painters who pre- 
ceded Raphael, revealing as it did to them an 
art not satisfied with itself, but reaching 
after higher things, and earnestly seeking to 
interpret nature and human life, is echoed 
in his "Old Pictures in Florence," which 
was written but six years after Hunt, Millais, 
and Rossetti formed their brotherhood. In 
poetry, they did not eschew classical subjects, 
as Browning did for the most part, but they 
treated these subjects in a romantic spirit, 
and so removed them from the sort of stric- 
tures that Browning made upon the perfection 
of Greek art. 

From this summary of the chief lines of 
literary development in the nineteenth cen- 
tury it will be seen, not only what a marvelous 
age it has been for the flowering of individual- 
ism in literary invention, but how Browning 
has surpassed all the other poets of note in 
the wideness of his departure from accepted 
standards, and how helpless the earlier critics 
were in the face of this departure, because of 
their dependence always upon critical shib- 
boleths — in other words, of principles not 
sufficiently universal — as their means of meas- 
uring a poet's greatness. Tennyson and the 



272 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

pre-Raphaelites won their popularity sooner 
among critics because they followed logically 
in the line of development inaugurated by 
the earlier poets, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, 
etc., whose poetry had already done some good 
work in breaking down the school of Dryden 
and Pope, though it succeeded only in erecting 
another standard not suflBciently universal 
to include Browning. The evolution of art 
forms, a principle so clearly understood, as 
we have shown by Browning, has never 
become a guiding one with critics, though 
Mr. Gosse in his ''Modern English Literature" 
has expressed a wish that the principle of 
evolution might be adapted to criticism. He 
has evidently felt how hopeless is the task of 
appraising poets by the old individualistic 
method, which, as he says, has been in favor 
for at least a century. It possesses, he 
declares, considerable effectiveness in adroit 
hands, but is, after all, an adaptation of the 
old theory of the unalterable type, merely sub- 
stituting for the one authority of the ancients 
an equal rigidity in a multitude of isolated mod- 
ern instances. For this inflexible style of crit- 
icism he proposes that a scientific theory shall 
be adopted which shall enable us at once to take 
an intelligent pleasure in Pope and in Words- 
worth, in Spenser and in Swift. He writes: 




George Meredith 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 273 

"Herbert Spencer has, with infinite courage, 
opened the entire world of phenomena to the 
principles of evolution, but we seem slow to ad- 
mit them into the little province of aesthetics. 
We cling to the individualist manner, to that 
intense eulogy which concentrates its rays on 
the particular object of notice and relegates all 
others to proportional obscurity. There are 
critics of considerable acumen and energy who 
seem to know no other mode of nourishing a 
talent or a taste than that which is pursued by 
the cultivators of gigantic gooseberries. They 
do their best to nip off all other buds, that the 
juices of the tree of fame may be concentrated 
on their favorite fruit. Such a plan may be 
convenient for the purposes of malevolence, and 
in earlier times our general ignorance of the 
principles of growth might well excuse it. But 
it issurely time that we should recognize only 
two criteria of literary judgment. The first 
is primitive, and merely clears the ground 
of rubbish; it is. Does the work before us, 
or the author, perform what he sets out to 
perform with a distinguished skill in the 
direction in which his powers are exercised? 
If not, he interests the higher criticism not 
at all; but if yes, then follows the second test: 
Where, in the vast and ever-shifting scheme 
of literary evolution, does he take his place. 



274 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

and in what relation does he stand, not to 
those who are least like him, but to those 
who are of his own kith and kin?" 

With such principles of criticism as this, 
the public would sooner be brought to an 
appreciation of all that is best worth while 
in literature, instead of being taken, as it too 
often is, upon a wrong scent to worship at the 
shrine of the Nokes and Stokes, who simply 
print blue and eat the turtles. 

If Mr. Gosse had himself been fully imbued 
with such principles would he have made the 
statement quoted in chapter two in regard to 
Browning's later books? And should we have 
such senseless criticism as a remark which has 
become popular lately, and which I believe 
emanated from a university in the South — 
namely, that Browning never said anything 
that Tennyson had not said better? As an 
illustration of this a recent critic may be 
quoted who is entirely scornful of the person 
who prefers Browning's 

*' God's in his heaven, all's right with the world" 

to Tennyson's 

"And hear at times a sentinel 

Who moves about from place to place. 
And whispers to the worlds of space 
In the deep night that all is well. " 



ART SHIBBOLETHS 275 

One might reply to this that it is a matter 
of taste had not Courthope shown conclu- 
sively that Matthew Arnold's criterion of crit- 
icism — namely, that a taste which is born of cul- 
ture is the only certain possession by which the 
critic can measure the beauty of a poet's line — 
is a fallacy. His argument is worth quoting: 

"You have stated strongly one side of the truth, but you 
have ignored, completely ignored, the other. You have 
asserted the claims of individual liberty, and up to a certain 
point I agree with you. I do not deny that spiritual liberty 
is founded on consciousness, and hence the self -consciousness 
of the age is part of the problem we are considering. I do 
not deny that the prevailing rage for novelty must also be 
taken into account. Liberty, variety, novelty, are all 
necessary to the development of Art. Without novelty there 
can be no invention, without variety there can be no charac- 
ter, without hberty there can be no life. Life, character, 
invention, these are of the essence of Poetry. But while you 
have defended with energy the freedom of the Individual, 
you have said nothing of the authority of society. And yet 
the conviction of the existence of this authority is a beHef 
perhaps even more firmly founded in the human mind than 
the sentiment as to the rights of individual liberty. . . . 

The great majority of the professors of poetry, however 
various their opinions, however opposite their tastes, have 
felt sure that there was in taste, as in science, a theory of 
false and true; in art, as in conduct, a rule of right and wrong. 
And even among those who have asserted most strongly the 
inward and relative nature of poetry, do you think there was 
one so completely a skeptic as to imagine that he was the sole 
proprietor of the perception he sought to embody in words; 
one who doubted his power, by means of accepted symbols, to 
communicate to his audience his own ideas and feeUngs about 



276 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

external things? Yet until some man shall have been found 
bold enough to defend a thesis so preposterous, we must 
continue to believe that there is a positive standard, by which 
those at least who speak a conunon language may reason 
about questions of taste. 

Armed with this gracious permission on 
the part of a professor of poetry, we may 
venture to reason a Kttle upon the foregoing 
quotations from Tennyson and Browning to 
the effect that the person of really good taste 
might like each of them in its place. While 
Tennyson's mystical quatrain is beautiful 
and quite appropriate in such a poem as 
''In Memoriam," it would not be in the least 
appropriate from the lips of a little silk- 
winding girl as she wanders through the streets 
of Asolo on a sunny morning singing her little 
songs. She is certainly a more lifelike child 
speaking Browningese, as she has often been 
criticised for doing, than she would be if upon 
this occasion she spoke in a Tennysonian 
manner. That her song has touched the 
hearts of the twentieth century, if it was not 
altogether appreciated in the nineteenth, is 
proved by the fact that it is one of the most 
popular songs of the day as set by Mrs. 
H. H. A. Beach, and that the line is heard 
upon the lips of people to-day who do not 
even know whose it is, and herein hes the 
ultimate test of greatness. 



VI. 

CLASSIC SURVIVALS 

BEFORE passing in review Browning's 
treatment of classical subjects as com- 
pared with the other great poets of the nine- 
teenth century, it will be interesting to take a 
glimpse at his choice of subject-matter in 
general. 

To compare Browning's choice of subject- 
matter with that of other English poets is to 
strike at the very root of his position in the 
chain of literary development. Subject- 
matter is by no means simple in its nature, 
but as a musical sound is composed of vibra- 
tions within vibrations, so it is made up of the 
complex relations of body and spirit — the 
mere external facts of the story are blended 
with such philosophical undercurrent, or dra- 
matic motif, or unfolding of the hidden springs 
of action as the poet is able to insinuate into it. 

However far back one penetrates in the 
history of poetry, poets will be found depend- 
ing largely upon previous sources, rather than 
upon their own creative genius, for the body 

277 



278 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of their subject-matter, until the question 
presents itself with considerable force as to 
who could have been the mysterious first 
poet who supplied plots to the rest of man- 
kind. Conjecture is obliged to play a part 
here, as it does wherever human origins are 
in question. Doubtless, this first poet was 
no separate individual, but simply the ele- 
ments man and nature, through whose action 
and reaction upon each other grew up story- 
forms, evidently compounded of human cus- 
toms, and observed natural phenomena such 
as those we find in the great Hindu, Greek, 
and Teutonic classics, and which thus crystal- 
lized became great well-springs of inspiration 
for future generations of poets. 

Each new poet, however, who is worthy of 
the name, sets up his own particular interplay 
with man and nature; and however much 
he may be indebted for his inspiration to past 
products of this universal law of action and 
reaction, he is bound to use them or interpret 
them in a manner colored by his own personal 
and peculiar relations with the universe. 

In so doing he supplies the more important 
spiritual side of subject-matter and becomes 
in very truth the poet or maker, to that extent 
at least which Browning himself lays down 
as the province of art — namely, to arrange. 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 279 

"Dissociate, redistribute, interchange 
Part with part: lengthen, broaden 
. . . simply what lay loose 
At first hes firmly after, what design 
Was faintly traced in hesitating line 
Once on a time grows firmly resolute 
Henceforth and evermore." 

Sometimes the poet's power of arranging 
and redistributing and interchanging carries 
him upward into the realm of ideas alone, 
among which his imagination plays in absolute 
freedom; he throws over the results of man's 
past dallyings with Nature and makes his 
own terms with her, and the result is an 
approach to absolute creation. 

Except in the case of lyric poetry the in- 
stances where there have been no suggestions 
as to subject-matter are rare in comparison 
with those where the subject-matter has been 
derived from some source. 

Look, for instance, at the father of English 
poetry, Chaucer, how he ransacked French, 
Italian and Latin literature for his subject- 
matter, most conscientiously carrying out his 
own saying, that 

"Out of olde feldys as men sey 

Comyth all this newe corn from yere to yere. 
And out of olde books in good fey 
Cometh all this new science that men alere. " 



280 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

How external a way he had of working 
over old materials, especially in his earlier 
work, is well illustrated in "The Parhament 
of Fowls," which he opens by relating the 
dream of Scipio, originally contained in 
Cicero's treatise on the "Republic," and 
preserved by Macrobius. This dream, 
which tells how Africanus appears to Scipio, 
and carries him up among the stars of the 
night, shows him Carthage, and prophesies 
to him of his future greatness, tells him of 
the blissful immortal life that is in store for 
those who have served their country, points 
out to him the brilliant celestial fires, and 
how insignificant the earth is in comparison 
with them, and opens his ears to the wondrous 
harmony of the spheres — this dream is as 
far removed from the main argument of the 
poem as anything well could be: a contest 
between three falcons for the hand of a 
formel. The bringing together of such diverse 
elements presents no difficulties to the child- 
like stage of literary development that de- 
pends upon surface analogies for the linking 
together of its thoughts. Just as talking 
about his ancestor, the great Scipio Africanus, 
with the old King Masinissa caused Scipio 
to dream of him, so reading about this dream 
caused Chaucer, who has to close his book 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 281 

and go to bed for want of a light, to dream 
of Scipio Africanus also, who "was come and 
stood right at his bedis syde." 

Africanus then plays the part of conductor 
to Chancer in a manner suggestive not only 
of his relations to Scipio, but of Virgil's 
relation to Dante, and brings him to the great 
gateway and through it into the garden of 
love. The description is of the temple of 
Venus in Boccaccio's "La Teseide." There 
Nature and the "Fowls" are introduced and 
described, and at last the point is reached. 
Nature proclaims that it is St. Valentine's 
day, and all the fowls may choose them mates. 
The royal falcon is given first choice, and 
chooses the lovely formel that sits upon 
Nature's hand. Two other ardent falcons 
declare their devotion to the same fowl, and 
Nature, when the formel declares that she 
will serve neither Venus nor Cupid and asks 
a respite for a year, decides that the three 
shall serve their lady another year — a pretty 
allegory supposed to refer to the wooing of 
Blanche of Lancaster by John of Gaunt. 

The main argument of this poem, when it 
finally is reached by artificially welding to- 
gether rich links borrowed from other poets, 
is one of the few examples in Chaucer of 
subject-matter derived direct from a real 



282 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

event, but the putting of it in an allegorical 
form at once lays him under obligations to 
his poetic predecessors, not only on Anglo- 
Saxon soil, but in France and Italy. 

His most important contributions as an 
inventor are, of course, his descriptions of the 
Canterbury Pilgrims, which are the pure out- 
come of a keen observation of men and women 
at first hand. So lifelike are they that in 
them he has made the England of the four- 
teenth century live again. But how small a 
proportion of the bulk of the "Canterbury 
Tales" is contained in these glimpses of 
English life and manners. It is but the 
framework upon which luxuriate vines of 
fancy transplanted from many another gar- 
den, and even in its place resembling, if not 
borrowed from, Boccaccio. 

The thoroughly human instincts of the poet 
assert themselves, however, in the choice of 
the tales which he puts into the mouths of 
his pilgrims. He allows a place to the crud- 
ities and even the vulgarities of common 
stories as well as to culture-lore. The magic 
of the East, the love tales of Italy, the wisdom 
of philosophers, the common stories of the 
people, all give up their wealth to his gentle 
touch. With a keen sense of propriety he, 
with few exceptions, gives each one of his 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 283 

pilgrims a tale suited in its general tendency 
to the character of its narrator, and in the 
critical chatter of the pilgrims about the tales, 
reflects not only his own tastes, but that of 
the times, the opinions expressed frequently 
being most uncomplimentary in their tenor. 
In fine, the life of reality and the Ufe of 
books is spread out before Chaucer, and his 
observation of both is keen and interested; 
and this it is which makes him much more than 
the "great translator" that Eustace Les 
Champs called him, and settles the nature of 
the "subtle thing" called spirit contributed 
by the individuality of the poet to his subject- 
matter. He brings everything within the 
reach of human sympathy, because his way 
of putting a story into his own words is 
sympathetic. He was a combination of the 
story-teller, the scholar, the poet, and the 
critic. As a scholar he brings in learned 
allusions that are entirely extraneous to the 
action in hand; as the story-teller, he takes 
delight in the tales that both the poet and 
the people have told; as the poet, his imagina- 
tion dresses up a story with a fresh environ- 
ment, often anachronous, and sometimes he 
alters the moral tone of the characters. 
Cressida is an interesting example of this. 
But instead of the characters suggesting by 



284 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

their own action and speech all the needed 
moral, Chaucer himself appears ever at hand 
to analyze and criticise and moralize, though 
he does it so delightfully that one hesitates 
to call him didactic. The result of all this 
is that the external form and the underlying 
essence of his subject-matter are not com- 
pletely fused. We often see a sort of guileless 
working of the machinery of art, yet it is 
true, no doubt, though perhaps not to the 
extent insisted on by Morley, that he has 
something of the Shakespearian quality which 
enables him to show men as they really are, 
"wholly developed as if from within, not as 
described from without by an imperfect and 
prejudiced observer." 

In his great work, Spenser is no less depend- 
ent upon sources for his inspiration, but 
there is a marked difference in his use of them. 
Although his range of observation is much 
narrower than Chaucer's, hardly extending 
at all into the realm of actual human effort, 
yet he makes an advance in so far as his 
powers of redistribution are much greater 
than Chaucer's. 

The various knights of the "Fairy Queen" 
and their exploits are not modeled directly 
upon any previous stories, but they are 
made up of incidents similar to those found 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 285 

scattered all through classic lore; and as his 
inspirations were drawn in most cases directly 
from the fountain-head of story in the Greek 
writers — instead of as they filtered through 
the Latin, Italian, and French, with the 
inevitable accretions that result from migra- 
tions, — and from the comparatively unal- 
loyed Arthurian legends, there is a clearer 
reflection in them of the cosmic elements that 
shine through both the Greek and Arthurian 
originals than is found in Chaucer. 

Although Spenser was certainly unaware 
of any such modern refinement of the my- 
thologist as a solar myth, yet the "Fairy 
Queen" forms a curious and interesting study 
on account of the survivals everywhere evi- 
dent of solar characteristics in his characters 
and plots. Indeed it could hardly be other- 
wise, considering his intention, and his method 
of carrying it out, which he, himseM, explains 
in his quaint letter to Sir Walter Raleigh — 
namely, "to fashion a gentleman or noble 
person in virtuous and gentle discipline." 
He goes on: 

"I close the history of King Arthur as most fit for the ex- 
cellency of his person, being made famous by many men's 
former works, and also further from danger and envy of sus- 
picion of present time. In which I have followed all the 
antique poets historical; first Homer, who in the person of 



286 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governor 
and a virtuous man, the one in his 'Diad,' the other in his 
* Odyssey'; then Virgil, whose like intention was to do in the 
person of iEneas: After him, Ariosto comprised them both 
in his Orlando, and lately Tasso dissevered them again, and 
formed both parts in two persons, the part which they in 
Philosophy call Ethice or virtues of a private man, colored in 
his Rinaldo, the other, named PoHtice, in his Godfieldo. By 
example of which excellent poets, I labor to portray in 
Arthur before he was King, the image of a brave Knight 
perfected in the twelve private moral virtues as Aristotle 
hath devised, the which is the purpose of these first twelve 
books." 

In the fashioning of his knight he took 
Arthur, a hero whose Ufe as it appears in the 
early romances is inextricably mingled with 
solar elements, and has built up his virtues 
upon other ancient solar heroes. Here are 
all the paraphemaUa of solar mythology: 
invincible knights with marvelous weapons, 
brazen castles guarded by dragons, marriage 
with a beautiful maiden and parting from the 
bride to engage in new quests, an enchantress 
who turns men into animals, even the outcast 
child; but none of the incidents appear intact. 
It is as if there had been a great explosion in 
the ancient land of romance and that in the 
mending up of things the separate pieces are 
all recognizable, although all joined together 
in a different pattern, while under all is the 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 287 

allegory. A gentle knight is no longer a 
solar hero as set forth by Max Mtiller or Cox, 
but Holiness; his invincible armor is not the 
all-powerful rays of the sun, but truth; the 
enchantress not night casting a spell over 
mortals, but sensuous pleasure entangling 
them. 

These two poets, Chaucer and Spenser, are 
prototypes of two poet types of two poetical 
tendencies that have gone on developing side 
by side in English literature: Chaucer, demo- 
cratic, interested supremely in the personali- 
ties of men and women, portraying the real, 
and Spenser, aristocratic, interested in imag- 
ing forth an ideal of manhood, choosing his 
subject-matter from sources that will lend 
themselves to such a purpose; Chaucer draw- 
ing his lessons out of the real actions of 
humanity; Spenser framing his story so that 
it will illustrate the moral he wishes to incul- 
cate. 

Shakespeare, of course, ranges himself in 
line with Chaucer. His interest centered on 
character, and wherever a story capable of 
character development presented itself, that 
he chose, altered it in outline comparatively 
little, and when he did so it was in order to 
carry forward the dramatic motif which he 
infused into his subject. The dramatic form 



288 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

in which he wrote furnished him a better 
medium for reaching a complete welding to- 
gether of the external and spiritual side of 
his subject-matter. Where Chaucer hinted at 
the possibihties of an artistic development of 
character that would cause the events of the 
story to appear as the inevitable outcome of 
the hidden springs of action, Shakespeare 
accomplished it, and peopled the world of 
imagination with group after group of living, 
acting characters. 

In the nineteenth century Tennyson and 
Browning have represented, broadly speaking, 
these two tendencies. As with Spenser, the 
classics and the Arthurian legends have been 
the sources from which Tennyson has drawn 
most largely; but although a philosophical 
undercurrent is this poet's spiritual addition 
to the subject-matter, his method of putting 
his soul inside his work is very different from 
Spenser's. He does not tear the old myths to 
pieces and join them together again after a pat- 
tern of his own to fit his allegorical situation, 
but keeps the events of his stories almost un- 
changed, in this particular resembling Chaucer 
and Shakespeare, and — except in a few 
instances, such as Tithonus and Lucretius, 
where the classic spirit of the originals is 
preserved — he infuses in his subject a vein 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS £89 

of philosophy, illustrating those modern ten- 
dencies of English thought of which Tennyson, 
himself, was the exemplar. Even when in- 
venting subjects, founded upon the experiences 
of everyday life, he so manipulates the story 
as to make it illustrate some of his favorite 
moral maxims. His characters do not act 
from motives which are the inherent neces- 
sities of their natures, but they act in accord- 
ance with Tennyson's preconceived notions of 
how they ought to act. He manipulates the 
elements of character to suit his own view 
of development, just as Spenser manipulated 
the elements of the story to suit his own 
allegorical purpose. 

Browning is the nineteenth-century heir of 
Chaucer; but it is doubtful whether Chaucer 
would recognize his own offspring, so remark- 
able has the development been in those five 
centuries. With Chaucer's keen interest in 
human nature deepened to a profound insight 
into the very soul of humanity, and the added 
wealth of these centuries of human history, 
Browning not only had a far wider range of 
choice in subject-matter, but he was enabled 
to instil into it greater intellectual and em- 
otional complexities. 

Rarely has he treated any subject that 
has already been treated poetically unless 



290 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

we except the transcripts from the classics 
soon to be considered. Wherever he saw an 
interesting historical personage, interesting, 
not on account of his brilliant achievements 
in the eyes of the world, but on account of 
potentialities of character, such a one he has 
set before us to reveal himself. There are 
between twenty and thirty portraits of this 
nature in his work, chosen from all sorts and 
conditions of men — men who stand for some 
phase of growth in human thought; and always 
in developing a personality he gives the 
kernel of truth upon which their peculiar point 
of view is based. Thus, among the musical 
poems, Abt Vogler speaks for the intuition- 
alist — he who is blessed by a glimpse of 
the absolute truth. Charles Avison, on the 
other hand, is the philosopher of the relative 
in music and the arts generally. Among the 
art poems, Fra Lippo Lippi is the apostle 
of beauty in realism, Andrea del Sarto the 
attainer of perfection in form. In the relig- 
ious poems the Jewish standpoint is illustrated 
in ''Saul" and "Rabbi Ben Ezra," the Chris- 
tian in the portrait of John in "The Death 
in the Desert"; the empirical reasoner in 
"Paracelsus." 

This is only one of Browning's methods in 
the choice and use of subject-matter. The 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 291 

characters and incidents in his stories are 
frequently the result of pure invention, but 
he sets them in an environment recreated 
from history, developing their individualities 
in harmony with the environment, thus giving 
at one stroke the spirit of the time and the 
individual qualities of special representatives 
of the time. Examples of this are: "My 
Last Duchess," where the Duke is an entirely 
imaginary person and the particular incident 
is invented, but he is made to act and talk 
in a way perfectly in keeping with the spirit 
of the time — mediaeval Italy. "Hugues of 
Saxe-Gotha" is another being of Browning's 
fancy, who yet represents to perfection the 
spirit of the old fugue writers. "Luria," 
"The Soul's Tragedy," "In a Balcony," all 
represent the same method. 

Another plan pursued by the poet is either 
to invent or borrow a historical personage 
into whose mouth he puts the defence of 
some course of action or ethical standard 
that may or may not be founded upon 
the highest ideals. Sludge, the hero of 
"Fifineat the Fair," Bishop Blougram, Hoh- 
enstiel-Schwangau, range themselves in this 
group. 

There are comparatively few cases where 
he has taken a complete story and developed 



292 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

its spiritual possibilities without much change 
in external detail, but how adequate his art 
was to such ends, "The Ring and the Book," 
*'Inn Album," "Two Poets of Croisic," "Red 
Cotton Nightcap Country," the historical 
dramas of "Strafford," and "King Victor and 
King Charles" fully prove, including, as they 
do, some of his finest masterpieces. 

History and story have furnished many of 
the incidents which he has worked up in his 
dramatic lyrics and romances like "Clive," 
"Herve Riel," **Donald," etc. There remains, 
however, a large number of poems containing 
some of Browning's loveliest work in which 
the subject-matter is, as far as we know, the 
creation of pure, unadulterated fancy. "A 
Blot in the 'Scutcheon," "In a Balcony," 
"Colombe's Birthday," "Childe Roland," 
"James Lee's Wife" are some of them. Even 
in this rapid survey of the field the fact is 
patent that Browning's range of subject- 
matter is infinitely wider and his method of 
developing it far more varied than has been 
that of any other English poet. He seems 
the first to have completely shaken himself 
free from the trammels of classic or mediaeval 
literature. There are no echoes of Arthur 
and his Knights in his poetry, the shadows of 
the Greek gods and goddesses exert no spell ~ 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 293 

except in the few instances when he deliber- 
ately chose a Greek subject. 

The fact that Browning was so free from 
classical influence in the great body of his 
work as compared with the other chief poets 
of the nineteenth century gives an especial 
interest to those poems in which he chose 
classical themes for his subjects. There are 
not more than ten all told, and one of these 
is a translation, yet they represent some of 
his finest and most original work, for Browning 
could not touch a classical theme without 
infusing into it that grasp and insight peculiar 
to his own genius. 

His first and most conventionally classical 
poem is the fragment in ''Men and Women," 
"Artemis Prologizes," written in 1842. It 
was to have been the introduction to a long 
poem telling of the mad love of Hippolytus 
for a nymph of Artemis, after that goddess 
had brought about his resuscitation. It has 
been suggested by Mr. Boynton in an inter- 
esting paper that Browning shows traces of 
the influence of Landor in his poetry. This 
fragment certainly furnishes argument for this 
opinion, though it has a strength of diction 
along with its Greek severity and terseness 
of style which leads to the conclusion that 
the influence came from the fountain head 



294 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of Greek poetry itself rather than through 
the lesser muse of this nineteenth -century 
Greek. 

The poem is said to have been begun on 
a sick-bed and when the poet recovered he 
had forgotten or lost interest in his plans. 
This is to be regretted for if he had continued 
as he began, the poem would have stood 
unique in his work as a true survival of Greek 
subject wedded with classical form and style, 
and would certainly have challenged compari- 
son with the best work done in this field by 
Landor or Swinburne, who tell over the 
classical stories or even invent new episodes, 
but, when all is said, do not write as if they 
were actually themselves Greeks. 

There is no other instance in Browning of 
such a survival. In his other poems on 
Greek subjects it is Browning bringing Greek 
life to our ken with wonderful distinctness, 
but doing it according to his own accustomed 
poetical methods, or, as in '*Ixion," a Greek 
story has been used as a symbol for the 
inculcating of a philosophy which is largely 
Browning's own. 

In spite of the fact that he has turned to 
Greece so seldom for inspiration, his Greek 
poems range from such stirring pictures of 
Greek life and feeling as one gets in the splen- 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 295 

did dramatic idyl "Pheidippides," based on 
a historical incident, through the imaginary 
**Cleon,*' in which is found the sublimated 
essence of Greek philosophical thought at the 
time of Christ — thought, weary of law and 
beauty, longing for a fresh inspiration, knowing 
not what, and unable to perceive it in the 
new ideal of love being taught by the Chris- 
tians — to "Aristophanes' Apology," in which 
the Athens of his day, with its literary and 
political factions, is presented with a force 
and analysis which place it second only to 
**The Ring and the Book." 

This poem taken, with Balaustion, gives the 
reader not only a comprehensive view of the 
historical atmosphere of the time but indi- 
rectly shows the poet's own attitude toward 
the literary war between Euripides and 
Aristophanes. So different are Browning's 
Greek poems from all other poems upon 
classical subjects that it will be interesting 
to dwell upon the most important of them 
at greater length than has been deemed neces- 
sary in the case of the more widely known 
and read of the poems. 

"Cleon" links itself with the nineteenth 
century, because of its dealing with the 
problem of immortality, a problem which has 
been ever present in the mind of the century. 



296 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Cleon has, beside that type of synthetic 
mind which belongs to a ripe phase of civih- 
zation. Though he is a Greek and a pagan, 
he stretches hands across the centuries to 
men of the type of Morris or Matthew Arnold. 
He is the latest child of his own time, the 
heir of all the ages during which Greece had 
developed its aesthetic perfection, discovered 
the inadequacy of its established religion, 
come through its philosophers and poets to a 
perception of the immortality of the soul, 
and sunk again to a skepticism which had no 
vision of personal immortality at least, though 
among the stoics there were some who believed 
in an absorption into divine being. Cleon 
would fain believe in personal immortality 
but cannot, and, like Matthew Arnold, believes 
in facing death imperturbably. 

In " Balaustion's Adventure" a historical 
tradition is used as the central episode of the 
poem, but life and romance are given to it by 
the creation of the heroine, Balaustion, a 
young Greek woman whose fascinating per- 
sonality dominates the whole poem. She was 
a Rhodian, else her freedom of action and 
speech might seem too modern, but among 
the islands of Greece, at least at the time of 
Euripides, there still survived that attitude 
toward woman which we see reflected in the 




Euripides 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 297 

Homeric epics. Away from Athens, too, 
Euripides was a power; hence his defence is 
put into the mouth of one not an Athenian. 
She had saved a shipload of Athenian sympa- 
thizers by reciting Euripides when they were 
in danger from the hostile Syracusans. 

Besides the romantic touch which is given 
the story by the creation of the lyric girl, there 
is an especial fitness in making the enthusi- 
astic devotee of this poet a woman, for no 
one among the ancients has so fully and sympa- 
thetically portrayed woman in all her human 
possibilities of goodness and badness as 
Euripides, yet he has been called a woman- 
hater — because some of his men have railed 
against women — but one Alkestis is enough 
to offset any dramatic utterances of his men 
about women. The poet's attitude should 
be looked for in his power of portraying 
women of fine traits, not in any opinions 
expressed by his men. Furthermore, Brown- 
ing had before him a model of Balaustion in 
her enthusiasm for Euripides, in Mrs. Brown- 
ing. These circumstances are certainly suffi- 
cient to prove the appropriateness of making 
a Rhodian girl the defender of Euripides. 

There is nothing more delicious in Browning 
than Balaustion's relation of "Alkestis," as 
she had seen it acted, to her three friends. 



298 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Her woman's comment and criticisms combine 
a Browning's penetration of the fine points 
in the play with a girl's idealism. Such a 
combination of masculine intellectualism and 
feminine charm has been known in women of 
all centuries. As the translation of the beau- 
tiful play of *'Alkestis " proceeds, Balaustion 
interprets its art and moral, defending her 
favorite poet, not with the ponderousness of 
a grave critic weighing the influences which 
may have molded his genius, or calculating 
the pros and cons of his style, but with the 
swift appreciation of a mind and spirit full 
of the ardor of sympathy. Moreover, her 
talk of the play being a recollection of how it 
appeared to her as she saw it acted, the mere 
text is constantly enlarged upon and made 
vital with flashing glimpses of the action, as, 
for example, in the passage just after the 
funeral of Alkestis: 

"So, to the struggle oflF strode Herakles, 
When silence closed behind the lion-garb. 
Back came our dull fact settling in its place. 
Though heartiness and passion half-dispersed 
The inevitable fate. And presently 
In came the mourners from the funeral, 
One after one, until we hoped the last 
Would be Alkestis, and so end our dream. 
Could they have really left Alkestis lone 
I' the wayside sepulchre! Home, all save she! 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 299 

And when Admetos felt that it was so, 

By the stand-still : when he hf ted head and face 

From the two hiding hands and peplos' fold. 

And looked forth, knew the palace, knew the hills. 

Knew the plains, knew the friendly frequence there. 

And no Alkestis any more again. 

Why, the whole woe billow-like broke on him. '* 

Again, her criticism of Admetos gives at 
once the natural feeHng of a girl who could 
not be satisfied with what seemed to her his 
selfish action, and Browning's feeling that 
Euripides saw its selfishness just as surely as 
Balaustion, despite the fact that it was in 
keeping, as numerous critics declare, with the 
customs of the age, and would not by any 
of his contemporaries be regarded as selfish 
on his part: 

"So he stood sobbing: nowise insincere. 
But somehow child-like, Uke his children, like 
Childishness the world over. What was new 
In this announcement that his wife must die? 
What particle of pain beyond the pact 
He made with his eyes wide open, long ago — 
Made and was, if not glad, content to make? 
Now that the sorrow, he had called for, came. 
He sorrowed to the height: none heard him say. 
However, what would seem so pertinent, 
*To keep this pact, I find surpass my power; 
Rescind it, Moirai ! Give me back her Kfe, 
And take the hfe I kept by base exchange! 



300 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Or, failing that, here stands your laughing-stock 

Fooled by you, worthy just the fate o' the fool 

Who makes a pother to escape the best 

And gain the worst you wiser Powers allot!' 

No, not one word of this; nor did his wife 

Despite the sobbing, and the silence soon 

To follow, judge so much was in his thought — 

Fancy that, should the Moirai acquiesce. 

He would relinquish Hfe nor let her die. 

The man was hke some merchant who in storm, 

Throws the freight over to redeem the ship; 

No question, saving both were better still, 

As it was, — why, he sorrowed, which sufficed. 

So, all she seemed to notice in his speech 

Was what concerned her children. " 

Among modem critics who take the con- 
ventional ground in regard to Admetos may 
be cited Churton Collins, whose opinion is, 
of course, weighty. He writes: 

"Alcestis would be considered fortunate for having had an 
opportunity of displaying so conspicuously the fidelity to a 
wife's first and capital duty. Had Admetus prevented such a 
sacrifice he would have robbed Alcestis of an honor which 
every nobly ambitious woman in Hellas would have coveted. 
This is so much taken for granted by the poet that all that he 
lays stress on in the drama is the virtue rewarded by the 
return of Alcestis to Hfe, the virtue characteristic of Adme- 
tus, the virtue of hospitahty; to this duty in all the agony of his 
sorrow Admetus had been nobly true, and as a reward for 
what he had thus earned, the wife who had been equally true 
to woman's obligations was restored all-glorified to home and 
children and mutual love. " 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 301 

Most readers, however, will find it difficult 
to put themselves into the appropriate Greek 
frame of mind, and will sympathize with 
Browning's supposition that after all Euripi- 
des had transcended current ideas on the 
subject and deliberately intended to convey 
such an interpretation of the character of 
Admetos as Balaustion gives. 

Balaustion shows her penetration again 
in her appreciation of Herakles. He distin- 
guishes clearly between evil that is inherent 
in the nature as the selfishness of Admetos, 
and evil which is more or less external, growing 
out of conditions incident to the time rather 
than from any real trait of nature. Herakles' 
delight in the hospitality accorded him, his 
drinking and feasting in the interim of his 
labors, did not touch the genuine, large- 
hearted helpfulness of the demigod, who 
became sober the moment he learned there 
was sorrow in the house and need of his aid. 

In her proposed version of the story, Balaus- 
tion is surely the romantic girl, who would 
have her hero a hero indeed and in every 
way the equal of his spouse. Yet if we delve 
below this romanticism of Balaustion we shall 
find the poet's own belief in the almost 
omniscient power of human love the basis 
of the relation between Admetos and Alkestis. 



302 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

The soul of Alkestis in one look entered 
into that of Admetos; she died, but he is 
entirely guiltless of agreeing to her death. 
Alkestis herself had made the pact with 
Apollo to die for her husband. He, when he 
learns it, refuses to accept the sacrifice, and un- 
able to persuade him that his duty to human- 
ity demands that he accept it, Alkestis asks him 
to look at her. Then her soul enters his, but 
when she goes to Hades and demands to be- 
come a ghost, the Queen of Hades replies: 

"Hence, thou deceiver! This is not to die. 
If, by the very death which mocks me now. 
The Hfe, that's left behind and past my power. 
Is formidably doubled — Say, there fight 
Two athletes, side by side, each athlete armed 
With only half the weapons, and no more, 
Adequate to a contest with their foes. 
If one of these should fling helm, sword and shield 
To fellow — shieldless, wordless, helmless late — 
And so leap naked o*er the barrier, leave 
A combatant equipped from head to heel, 
Yet cry to the other side, 'Receive a friend 
Who fights no longer!' *Back, friend, to the fray!' 
Would be the prompt rebuflF; I echo it. 
Two souls in one were formidable odds: 
Admetos must not be himself and thou! 

"And so, before the embrace relaxed a whit. 
The lost eyes opened, still beneath the look; 
And lo, Alkestis was alive again. 
And of Admetos' rapture who shall speak?'* 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 303 

How unique a treatment of a classical sub- 
ject this poem is, is self-evident. Not content 
with making a superb translation of the play, 
remarkable both for its literalness and for its 
poetic beauty, the poet has dared to present 
that translation indirectly through the mouth 
of another speaker, and to incorporate with 
it a running commentary of criticism in blank 
verse. Still more daring was it to make play 
and criticism an episode in a dramatic mono- 
logue in which we learn not only the story 
of the rescue of the shipload of Athenian 
sympathizers, but the story of Balaustion's 
love. Along with all this complexity of interest 
there is still room for a lifelike portrayal of 
Balaustion herself, one of the loveliest concep- 
tions of womanhood in literature. 

To reiterate what I have upon another 
occasion expressed in regard to her, she is a 
girl about whom the fancy loves to cling — 
she is so joyous, so brave, and so beautiful, 
and possessed of so rare a mind scintillating 
with wit, wisdom and critical insight, not 
Browning's own mind either except in so 
far as his sympathies were with Euripides. 
Her ardor for purity and perfection is perhaps 
peculiarly feminine. It is quite different from 
that of the mind tormented by the problem of 
evil and taking refuge in a partisanship of 



304 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

evil as a force which works for good and with- 
out which the world would be a waste of 
insipidity. Her suggested version of the 
Alkestis story converts Admetos into as much 
of a saint as Alkestis, and makes an exquisite 
and soul-stirring romance of their perfect 
union, though it must be admitted that it 
would do away with all the intensity and 
dramatic force of the play as it is presented 
by Euripides. Like the angels who rejoice 
more over one sinner returned than over the 
ninety and nine that did not go astray, an 
artist prefers the contrast and movement of 
a sinning and regenerated Admetos to an 
Admetos more suited from the first to be the 
consort of Alkestis. This is the touch, 
however, which preserves Balaustion's femin- 
ine charm and makes her truly her own self — 
an ardent soul very far from being simply 
Browning's mouthpiece. 

"'Aristophanes' Apology" is a still more 
remarkable play in its complexity. Again, 
Balaustion is the speaker, and Browning has 
set himself the task in this monologue of 
relating the fall of Athens, of presenting the 
personality of Aristophanes, of defending 
Euripides, a translation of whose play,''Hera- 
kles," is included, and incidentally sketching 
the history of Greek comedy, all through the 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 305 

mouth of the one speaker, Balaustion. Not 
until one has grasped the law by which the 
poet has accomplished this, and has moreover 
freshly in his mind the facts of Greek history 
at the time of Athen's fall, and Greek litera- 
ture, especially the plays of Aristophanes and 
Euripides, can the poem be thoroughly en- 
joyed. 

In the very first line the suggestion of the 
scene setting is given, and such suggestions 
occur from time to time all through the poem. 
It should be observed that they are never 
brought in for themselves alone, but are 
always used in connection with some mood 
of Balaustion's or as imagery in relation to 
some thought. While the reader is thus kept 
conscious of the background of wind and wave, 
as Balaustion and her husband voyage toward 
Rhodes, it is not until the end of the poem 
that we learn with a pleasant surprise that 
the boat on which they are sailing is the 
same one saved once by Balaustion when 
she recited Euripides' "sweetest, saddest 
song." Thus there is a dramatic denouement 
in connection with the scene setting. 

Through the expression of a mood of 
despair on the part of Balaustion at the 
opening of the poem the reader is put in 
possession not only of the scene setting but 



306 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of the occasion of the voyage, which is the 

overthrow of Athens. From the mood of 

despair Balaustion passes to one in which she 

describes how she could better have borne 

to see Athens perish. This carries her on 

to a more hopeful frame of mind, in which 

she can foresee the spiritual influence of 

Athens persisting. The peace of mind ensuing 

upon this consideration makes it possible for 

her calmly to survey the events connected 

with its downfall, among which the picturesque 

episode of the dancing of the flute girls to 

the demolition of the walls of the Piraeus is 

conspicuous. She then sees the vision of the 

immortal Athens while Sparta the victorious 

in arms will die. Then comes a mood in 

which she declares it will be better to face 

the grief than to brood over it, which leads 

to her proposing to Euthukles that they treat 

the fall of Athens as a tragic theme, as the 

poet might do, and enact it on the voyage. 

Then grief over the recent events takes 

possession of her again, and now with the 

feminine privilege of changing her mind, she 

thinks it would be better to rehearse an event 

which happened to herseK a year ago as a 

prologue. Speaking of adventures causes her 

very naturally to drop into reminiscences 

about her first adventure, when she recited 




Aristophanes 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 307 

Euripides and met the man who was to be- 
come her husband. 

Thus, through this perfectly natural transi- 
tion from one mood to another, Balaustion 
leads up to the real subject-matter of the 
poem, Aristophanes' defence of himseM, 
which, however, is preceded by an account 
of the effect of the death of Euripides upon 
the Athenians as witnessed by Euthukles, his 
death being the occasion of Aristophanes' 
call on Balaustion. What she calls the pro- 
logue is really the main theme of the poem, 
while all her talk up to this point is truly 
the prologue. The actual account of the fall 
of Athens does not come until the conclusion, 
and is related in comparatively few words. 

What seems, then, to be the chief theme 
of the poem with its setting of wind and wave 
and bark bears somewhat the same relation 
to the real theme as incidental music does to 
a play. Upon first thoughts it may seem 
like a clumsy contrivance for introducing 
Aristophanes upon the scene, but in the end 
it will be perceived, I think, that it serves the 
artistic purpose of placing Aristophanes in 
proper perspective. Balaustion with her ex- 
quisitely human moods and progressive spirit 
forms the right complement to the decaying 
ideals of Aristophanes, and gives him the 



308 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

proper flavor of antiquity. Instead of seeing 
him in the broad Hght of a direct dramatic pres- 
entation we see him indirectly through Balaus- 
tion's thoughts and moods, who, though per- 
mitting him to do full justice to himself, yet 
surrounds him all the time with the subtle 
influence of her sympathy for Euripides. 

As the better way to follow the development 
of the preliminary part of the poem is by 
regarding every step as the outcome of a 
mood on the part of Balaustion, so the better 
way of following Aristophanes through what 
seems his interminable defence of himself is 
again by tracing the moods through which 
his arguments express themselves. 

Aristophanes comes in half drunk to make 
his call on Balaustion, and his first mood is 
one of graciousness toward her whose beauty 
has impressed his artistic perceptions, but 
noticing her dignity and its effect in routing 
the chorus, he immediately begins to be on 
the defensive. The disappearance of his 
chorus, however, takes him off on a little 
excursion about the moves which are being 
made by the city to cut down the expense 
of dramatic performances by curtailing the 
chorus. In a spirit of bravado he declares 
that he does not care so long as he has his 
p^ctors left. A coarse reference causes Balaus- 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 309 

tion to turn and he changes his mood. He 
acknowledges he is drunk and rushes oflF into 
a defence of drunkenness in general for play- 
wrights and for himself, which on this occasion 
came about on account of the supper he and 
his players have attended. He rattles on 
about the supper, telling how the merriment 
increased until something happened. The 
thought of this something changes his mood 
completely. Balaustion notices it, he reads 
her expression, and characteristically explains 
the change in himseM as due to her fixed 
regard. The reader is left in suspense as to 
the something which happened, yet it haunts 
the memory, and he feels convinced that 
some time he is to know what it was. 

Now Aristophanes bids Balaustion speak 
to him without fear. She does so, conveying 
in her welcome both her disapproval and her 
admiration. Aristophanes, evidently piqued, 
does not answer, but makes personal remarks 
upon the manner of her speech, asking her if 
she learned tragedy from him — Euripides. 
This starts him oflF on dreams of a new comedy 
in which women shall act, but he concludes 
that his mission is to ornament comedy as 
he finds it, not invent a new comedy. 

This gives Balaustion a chance to ask if 
in his last play, later than the one Euthukles 



310 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

had seen, he had smoothed this ancient club 
of comedy he speaks of into a more human 
and less brutal implement of warfare, and 
was it a conviction of this new method he 
might use in comedy which was the something 
that happened at the feast. Aristophanes, 
as usual when he is cornered, makes no 
direct reply, but asks if Euthukles saw his 
last play, to which Balaustion frankly repUes 
that having seen the first he never cared to 
see the following. Aristophanes avows he 
can show cause why he wrote them, but 
glances off in a sarcastic reference to Euripides, 
whose art he says belongs to the closet or the 
cave, not to the world. He prefers to stick 
to the old forms of art and make Athens 
happy in what coarse way she desires. He 
then proceeds to enlarge upon what that is. 
Then he changes again and asks with various 
excursions into side issues (for example: the 
rise of comedy; how it is now being regarded 
by the government, which favors tragedy, 
giving him another chance for a dig at Euri- 
pides) if he is the man likely to be satisfied 
to be classed merely a comic poet since he 
wrote the "Birds?" Balaustion encourages 
him a little here, and, cheered up, he goes on 
to tell how he gave the people draught divine 
in "Wasps" and "Grasshoppers," and how 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 311 

he praised peace by showing the kind of 
pleasures one may have when peace reigns — 
and still at every opportunity casting slurs 
at the tragic muse, especially Euripides. 

He goes on describing his play until he 
touches on some of the sarcasms which make 
Balaustion wince. 

Then he turns about and declares he 
loathes as much as she does the things of 
which he tells, but his attempts at bringing 
comedy up to a high level having failed, he 
is obliged to give the Athenians what they 
want, a smartened up version of the ''Thesma- 
phoriazousai, " which had failed the year 
before. He describes his triumph with this 
which was being celebrated at the supper 
when the something happened which is now 
at last described — namely, the entrance of 
Sophocles, who announces that he intends to 
commemorate the death of Euripides by hav- 
ing his chorus clothed in black and ungar- 
landed at the performance of his play next 
month. 

This startling scene, being prepared for 
and not brought in until Aristophanes has 
done much talking, seems to throw a sudden 
flash of reality into the poem. Ill-natured 
criticism, Aristophanes shows, follows on the 
part of the feasters, though Aristophanes' 



312 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

mood is one of sudden recognition of the 
value of Euripides. But when he^ sobered 
for the time being, proposes a toast to the 
Tragic Muse, the f casters consider it a joke. 
He quickly accepts the situation, and comes 
oflF triumphant by proposing a toast to both 
muses. 

After this Balaustion asks Aristophanes if 
he will commemorate Euripides with them. 
But his sober mood is gone. He looks about 
the room, sees things that belong to Euripides, 
and immediately begins stabbing at him. 
Balaustion objects, and upon the theme of 
respect to the dead he begins his usual invec- 
tive against his rivals, but finally ends by 
giving respect to Euripides, him whose serenity, 
he declares, could never with his gibes be 
disturbed. 

After venting this mood of animosity he 
begins soberly to discuss the origin of comedy. 
He traces its growth to the point where he 
found it, and enlarges on the improvements 
he has made, touching, as always, upon the 
criticisms of his opposers, and finally arriving 
at the chief point of diflFerence between him- 
self and Euripides, which he enlarges upon 
at great length. Here the incidental music 
breaks in with talk between Balaustion and 
Euthukles, in which the former rather tries 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 313 

to excuse herself from relating her reply to 
Aristophanes. 

However, she does give her reply, which 
is conducted in a more truly argumentative 
fashion than the defence of Aristophanes. 
She picks up his points and makes her points 
against him usually by denying the truth 
of what he has said. Her supreme defence 
is, however, the reading of the play "Hera- 
kles." 

Aristophanes, touched but not convinced, 
finally insists that he is Athens' best friend. 
He is no Thamuris to be punished for seeing 
beyond human vision. The last character- 
istic touch is when Aristophanes catches up 
the psalterion and sings the lyric of Thamuris. 
Then he departs, and Balaustion rehearses 
the last days of Athens, with Euthukles' part 
in delaying the tragedy of the doomed city. 

By threading one's way thus through the 
apology, not from the point of view of Aris- 
tophanes' arguments, but from the point of 
view of his moods, one experiences a tremen- 
dous sense of the personality of the man. 
Repetitions which are not required for the 
full presentation of his case take their place 
as natural to a man who is not only inordi- 
nately vain but is immediately swayed by 
every suggestion and emotion that comes to 



314 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

him. Owing to his volatile temperament the 
argument is varied by now a bit of vivid 
description like that of the archon's feast 
when Sophocles appeared, now by some 
merely personal remark to Balaustion. 

The criticism in this play, as in that of 
*'Balaustion's Adventure," may be considered 
either as representing some phase of contem- 
porary opinion about Aristophanes or as 
expressing the opinion of the poet himself. 
Balaustion's indignation is especially aroused 
by the two plays, "The Lusistrata" and the 
"Thesmophoriazousai," both of which she 
finds utterly detestable. It is interesting to 
compare with this entirely unfavorable criti- 
cism the feeling of such distinguished classical 
scholars as Gilbert Murray and J. A. Symonds. 
The first Murray describes as a play '*full of 
daring indecency, it is true, but the curious 
thing is that Aristophanes, while professing 
to ridicule the women, is all through on their 
side. The jokes made by the superior sex 
at the expense of the inferior — to give them 
their Roman names — are seldom remarkable 
either for generosity or refinement, and it is 
our author's pleasant humor to accuse every- 
body of every vice he can think of at the 
moment. Yet with the single exception that 
be credits women with an inordinate fondness 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 315 

for wine parties — the equivalent it would 
seem of afternoon tea — he makes them on 
the whole perceptibly more sensible and more 
sympathetic than his men." 

Of the second play Symonds speaks with 
actual enthusiasm. "It has a regular plot — 
an intrigue and a solution — and its persons 
are not allegorical but real. Thus it ap- 
proaches the standard of modern comedy. But 
the plot, though gigantic in its scale, and pro- 
digious in its wealth of wit and satire, is 
farcical. The artifices by which Euripides 
endeavors to win Agathon to undertake his 
cause, the disguise of Muesilochus in female 
attire, the oratory of the old man against the 
women in the midst of their assembly, his 
detection, the momentary suspension of the 
dramatic action by his seizure of the supposed 
baby, his slaughter of the swaddled wine jar, 
his apprehension by Cleisthenes, the devices 
and disguises by which Euripides endeavors 
to extricate his father-in-law from the scrape, 
and the final ruse by which he eludes the 
Scythian bowmen, and carries off Muesilochus 
in triumph — all these form a series of highly 
diverting comic scenes." Again, "There is 
no passage in Aristophanes more amusing 
than the harangue of Muesilochus. The 
portrait, too, of Agathon in the act of compo- 



316 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

sition is exquisitely comic. But the crowning 
sport of the 'Thesmophoriazousai' is in the 
last scene when Muesilochus adapts the 
Palamedes and the Helen of Euripides to his 
own forlorn condition, jumbling up the well- 
known verses of these tragedies with coarse- 
flavored, rustical remarks; and when at last 
Euripides, himself, acts Echo and Perseus to 
the Andromeda of his father-in-law, and both 
together mystify the policeman by their 
ludicrous utterance of antiphonal lamenta- 
tion." 

In her welcome of him, Balaustion expresses 
rather what she thinks he might be than what 
she really thinks he is. She welcomes him : 

"Good Genius! Glory of the poet, glow 
O' the humorist who castigates his kind, 
Suave summer-lightning lambency which plays 
On stag-horned tree, misshapen crag askew, 
Then vanishes with unvindictive smile 
After a moment's laying black earth bare. 
Splendor of wit that springs a thunder ball — 
Satire — to burn and purify the world. 
True aim, fair purpose: just wit justly strikes 
Injustice, — right, as rightly quells the wrong. 
Finds out in knaves', fools', cowards', armory 
The tricky tinselled place fire flashes through. 
No damage else, sagacious of true ore; 
Wit learned in the laurel, leaves each wreath 
O'er lyric shell or tragic barbiton, — 
Though ahen gauds be singed, — undesecrate. " 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 317 

Her attitude here is very like that of 
criticism in general, except that she is more or 
less sarcastic, meaning to imply that such 
Aristophanes might be but is not. Symonds, 
on the other hand, thinks him really what 
Balaustion thinks he might be. 

"If," he says, "Coleridge was justified in 
claiming the German word Lustspiel for the 
so-called comedies of Shakespeare, we have a 
far greater right to appropriate this wide and 
pregnant title to the plays of Aristophanes. 
The brazen mask which crowns his theatre 
smiles indeed broadly, serenely, as if its mirth 
embraced the universe; but its hollow eye- 
sockets suggest infinite possibihties of pro- 
foundest irony. Buffoonery carried to the 
point of paradox, wisdom disguised as in- 
sanity, and gaiety concealing the whole sum 
of human disappointment, sorrow and disgust, 
seem ready to escape from its open but rigid 
lips, which are molded to a proud perpetual 
laughter. It is a laughter which spares neither 
God nor man — which climbs Olympus only to 
drag down the immortals to its scorn, and trails 
the pall of august humanity in the mire; but 
which, amid its mockery and blasphemy, seems 
everlastingly asserting, as by paradox, that 
reverence of the soul which bends our knees 
to heaven and makes us respect our brothers." 



318 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

One cannot help feeling, in view of these 
very diverse opinions, that both are exagger- 
ated. The enthusiasm of Symonds seems 
almost fanatic. Though no one of penetra- 
tion can fail to see the wit and wisdom, and 
at times, in such lyrics as those in "The 
Clouds," the poetic charm of Aristophanes, 
the person of fastidious taste, whether a Greek 
girl of his own day, or a man of these latter 
days, must sometimes feel that his buffoonery 
oversteps the bounds of true wit, even when 
it is not shadowed by a coarseness not to be 
borne at the present day. When Balaustion 
asks him "in plain words," 

*'Have you exchanged brute blows, which teach the brute 
Man may surpass him in brutahty, — 
For human fighting, or true god-like force 
Which breeds persuasion nor needs fight at all?" 

Aristophanes replies that it had not been his 
intention to turn art's fabric upside down and 
invent an entirely new species of comedy. 
That sort of thing can be done by one who has 
turned his back on life, friendly faces, sym- 
pathetic cheer, as Euripides had done in his 
Salaminian cave. 

This may be regarded, on the whole, as a 
good bit of defence on Aristophanes' part. 
It is equivalent to his saying that there was 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 319 

no use in his trying to be anything for which 
his genius had not fitted him. This chimes in, 
again, with such authoritative criticism as 
Murray's, who declares: "The general value 
of his view of life, and, above all, his treat- 
ment of his opponent's alleged vices, may well 
be questioned. Yet admitting that he often 
opposed what was best in his age, or advo- 
cated it on the lowest grounds, admitting that 
his slanders are beyond description and that, as 
a rule, he only attacks the poor and the 
leaders of the poor, nevertheless he does it all 
with such exhuberant high spirits, such an 
air of its all being nonsense together, such 
insight and swiftness, such incomparable direct- 
ness and charm of style, that even if some 
Archelaus had handed him over to Euripides 
to scourge, he would probably have escaped 
his well-earned whipping." 

Much of Aristophanes' defence consists in 
slurring at Euripides, against whom he waxes 
more and more fierce as he goes on. His plays 
furnish numerous illustrations of his rivalry 
with Euripides, yet curiously enough, as crit- 
ics have pointed out, Aristophanes imitates 
Euripides to a noteworthy extent, so much so 
that the dramatist Cratinus invented a word 
to describe the style of the two — Euripid- 
Aristophanize. Judging from his parodies on 



320 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Euripides, he must certainly have read and 
reread his plays until he knew them practi- 
cally by heart. 

Balaustion, as Browning has portrayed her 
in this poem, is the lyric girl developed into 
splendid womanhood. She has a large heart 
and a large brain, as well as imagination and 
strong ethical fervor. Her intense feeling 
at the fall of Athens, which had been the 
ideal to her of greatness, and her reverential 
love for Euripides, her charity toward Aris- 
tophanes the man, if not toward his work, 
show how deep and far-reaching her sym- 
pathies were. Again, her imagination flashes 
forth in her picturesque descriptions of the 
ruined Athens and her prophetic picture of 
the new Athens, of the spirit which will arise 
in its place, in her telling portraiture of 
Aristophanes and his entrance into her house, 
as well as in many another passage. Her in- 
tellect shines out in her clever management 
of the argument with Aristophanes, and her 
ethical fervor in her denunciations of the 
moral depravity of certain of the plays. 

As to the question of whether a young 
Greek woman would be likely to criticise 
Aristophanes in this way, opinion certainly 
differs. History is, for the most part, silent 
about women. As Mahaffy says, it is only 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 321 

in the dramatists and the philosophers that 
we can get any ghmpses of the woman of the 
time. 

Mahaffy's opinions are worth quoting as an 
example of the pessimism growing out of a 
bias in favor of a particular type of woman 
which he idealized in his own mind. He seems 
utterly incapable of appreciating the human- 
ness of the women in the Greek drama- 
tists, especially those in Euripides. "Sadder 
than the condition of the aged was that of 
women," he writes, "at this remarkable 
period. The days of the noble and high- 
principled Penelope, of the refined and in- 
tellectual Helen, of the innocent and spirited 
Nausikaa, of the gentle and patient An- 
dromache, had passed away. Men no longer 
sought and respected the society of the 
gentler sex. Would that Euripides had even 
been familiar, as Homer was, with the sound 
of women brawling in the streets! For in 
these days they were confined to Asiatic 
silence and seclusion, while the whole life of 
the men, both in business and recreation, was 
essentially public. Just as the feverish ex- 
citement of political life nowadays prompts 
men to spend even their leisure in the clubs, 
where they meet companions of like passions 
and interests with themselves, so the Athenian 



32^ BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

gentleman only came home to eat and sleep. 
His leisure as well as his business kept him in 
the market place. His wife and daughters, 
ignorant of philosophy and politics, were 
strangers to his real hfe, and took no interest 
in his pursuits. 

"The results were fatal to Athenian society. 
The women, uninstructed, neglected, and en- 
slaved, soon punished their oppressors with 
their own keen and bitter weapons, and with 
none keener than their vices. For, of course, 
all the grace and delicacy of female character 
disappeared. Intellectual power in women 
was distinctly associated with moral de- 
pravity, so that excessive ignorance and 
stupidity was considered the only guarantee 
of virtue. The qualifications for society 
became incompatible with the quahfications 
for home duties, so that the outcasts from 
society, as we call them, were not the im- 
moral and the profligate but the honorable and 
the virtuous." 

Such is the view to be gleaned from history, 
and in Mahaffy's opinion the literature of the 
time tells the same story. He goes on: 
"When we consult the literature of the day, 
we find women treated either with contemp- 
tuous ridicule in comedy, or with still more 
contemptuous silence in history. In tragedy 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 323 

or in the social theories of the philosophers 
alone can we hope for a glimpse into the aver- 
age character and position of Athenian women. 
Here at least we might have expected that 
the portraits drawn with such consummate 
skill by Homer would have been easily trans- 
ferred to the Athenian stage. But to our 
astonishment we find the higher social feelings 
toward women so weak that the Athenian 
tragic poets seem quite unable to appreciate, 
or even to understand, the more delicate 
features in Homeric characters. They are 
painted so coarsely and ignorantly by Eu- 
ripides that we should never recognize them 
but for their names. Base motives and un- 
seemly wrangling take the place of chivalrous 
honor and graceful politeness. 

" But the critics of the day complained that 
Euripides degraded the ideal character of 
tragedy by painting human nature as he 
found it: in fact as it was, and not as it ought 
to be. Let us turn, then, to Sophokles, who 
painted the most ideal women which the 
imagination of a refined Athenian could con- 
ceive, and consider his most celebrated char- 
acters, his Antigone and his Elektra. A 
calm, dispassionate survey will, I think, pro- 
nounce them harsh and masculine. They act 
rightly, no doubt, and even nobly, but they 



324 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

do it in the most disagreeable way. Except 
in their external circumstances they differ 
in no respect from men." 

Certainly, the opinion expressed of the 
women of Euripides is tainted by the feeling 
that they ought to act like English matrons 
and their daughters. 

Quite a different impression is given by 
Symonds, who, in regard to some of the 
sentences occurring in Euripides which are 
uncomplimentary to women, says: ''It is im- 
possible to weigh occasional sententious sar- 
casms against such careful studies of heroic 
virtue in women as the Iphigenia, the Elektra, 
the Polyxena, the Alkestis." 

But the complete vindication of the fact 
that Balaustion and Mrs. Browning and our 
own women of to-day are on the right side in 
their appreciation of Euripides as the great 
woman's poet of antiquity is found in the 
opinion of our contemporary critic, Gilbert 
Murray, who more than thirty years after 
these poems were written writes of the 
"wonderful women-studies by which Euri- 
pides dazzled and aggrieved his contempora- 
ries. They called him a hater of women; and 
Aristophanes makes the women of Athens 
conspire for revenge against him. Of course 
he was really the reverse. He loved and 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 325 

studied and expressed the women whom 
the Socratics ignored and Pericles advised 
to stay in their rooms. Crime, however, is 
always more striking and palpable than virtue. 
Heroines like Medea, Phaedra, Stheneboia, 
Aerope, Clytemnestra, perhaps fill the imagi- 
nation more than those of the angelic or de- 
voted type — Alcestis, who died to save her 
husband, Evadne and Laodamia, who could 
not survive theirs, and all the great Ust of 
virgin-martyrs. But the significant fact is 
that, like Ibsen, Euripides refuses to idealize 
any man, and does ideahze women. There 
is one youth-martyr, Menoikeus in the 
' Phsenissae,' but his martyrdom is a mas- 
culine, businessUke performance — he gets 
rid of his prosaic father by a pretext about 
traveling money without that shimmer of 
loveliness that hangs over the virgins." 

Where then did Euripides find these splendid 
women of force and character? It seems 
quite impossible that he could have evolved 
them out of his own inner consciousness. He 
must have known women who served at 
least, in part, as models. Besides, there was 
undoubtedly a new woman movement in the 
air or Plato in his "Republic" would not have 
suggested a plan for educating men and 
women alike. The free women of Athens 



326 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

are known in some cases to have attained 
a high degree of culture. Aspasia, who be- 
became the wife of Pericles, is a shining ex- 
ample. There was Sappho, also, with her 
school of poetry attended by girls in Lesbos. 

Taking all these facts into consideration, 
it would seem that Browning was sufficiently 
justified in drawing such a woman as Balaus- 
tion, and that a woman of her penetrating 
intellect and ardor of spirit would love Eu- 
ripides, and dislike Aristophanes, seems ab- 
solutely certain. 

Therefore, if the historical attitude is taken 
toward Balaustion and her criticism and 
appreciation, it can be on the whole accepted 
as reflecting what would probably be the 
feeling of an ardent woman-follower of Eu- 
ripides in his own day. 

But, on the other hand, if the criticism be 
taken as Browning's own, it is open to ques- 
tion whether it is partisan rather than en- 
tirely broad-minded. Take the consensus of 
opinion of modern critics and we find them 
all agreed in regard to the genius of Aris- 
tophanes, though admitting that his coarse- 
ness must, at times, detract from their enjoy- 
ment of him. 

There is much truth in Symonds' criticism 
of the poem. He says of it: "As a sophist and 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 327 

a rhetorician of poetry, Mr. Browning proves 
himseK unrivaled, and takes rank with the 
best writers of historical romances. Yet 
students may fairly accuse him of some special 
pleading in favor of his friends and against his 
foes. It is true that Aristophanes did not 
bring back again the golden days of Greece; 
true that his comedy revealed a corruption 
latent in Athenian hfe. But neither was 
Euripides in any sense a savior. Impartiahty 
regards them both as equally destructive: 
Aristophanes, because he indulged animalism 
and praised ignorance in an age which ought 
to have outgrown both; Euripides, because 
he criticised the whole fabric of Greek thought 
and feeling in an age which had not yet dis- 
tinguished between analysis and skepticism. 

"What has just been said about Mr. Brown- 
ing's special pleading indicates the chief fault 
to be found with his poem. The point of 
view is modern. The situation is strained. 
Aristophanes becomes the scapegoat of Athe- 
nian sins, while Euripides shines forth a 
saint as well as a sage. Balaustion, for her 
part, beautiful as her conception truly is, 
takes up a position which even Plato could 
not have assumed. Into her mouth Mr. 
Browning has put the views of the most 
searching and most sympathetic modern 



328 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

analyst. She judges Euripides not as he 
appeared to his own Greeks, but as he strikes 
the warmest of his admirers, who compare his 
work with that of all the poets who have ever 
hved." 

It would seem that Mr. Symonds, himself, 
does some special pleading here. As we have 
seen, Euripides, though not a favorite in 
Athens, did have warm admirers in his own 
day; consequently there is nothing out of the 
way in portraying one of his contemporaries 
as an admirer. Furthermore, Balaustion does 
not represent him as a savior of his age. She 
sees only too clearly that in the narrow sense 
of convincing his age he has not been a suc- 
cess. What is her vision of the spiritual 
Athens which is to arise but a confession of 
this fact! Nor is it entirely improbable that 
she might be prophetic of a time when Eu- 
ripides will be recognized as the true power. 
Any disciple of a poet ahead of his time per- 
ceives these things. One should be careful 
in judging of the poem as good modern 
criticism not to be entirely guided by the 
opinions of Balaustion. It should never be 
forgotten that it is a dramatic poem in which 
Aristophanes is allowed to speak for himself 
at great length, and whatever can be ac- 
cepted as good argument for himself upon 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 329 

his own ground should be set over against 
the sweeping strictures of Balaustion. In- 
deed it may turn out that Browning has, 
after all, said for him the most exculpatory 
word of any critic, for he has so presented his 
case as to show that he considers him the 
outcome of the undeveloped phase of morals 
then existing for which he is hardly responsible 
because the higher light has not yet broken 
in upon him. This is evidenced especially 
in the strange combination in him of a frank 
belief in a life of the senses which goes along 
with a puritanical reverence for the gods, and 
a hatred of anything that falls within his own 
definition of vice. 

To sum up, if I may again be forgiven for 
re-expressing an opinion elsewhere printed, 
which states as clearly as I am able to do my 
conviction of where the play stands as criti- 
cism, like all dramatic work, this poem 
aims to present the actual spirit of the time in 
which the actors moved upon the stage of life, 
and to reproduce something of their mental 
and emotional natures. Any criticism of the 
poets who figure in the poem, or of the larger 
question of the quarrel between tragedy and 
comedy, should be deduced indirectly, as 
implied in the sympathetic presentation of 
both sides, not based exclusively upon direct 



330 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

expressions of opinion on either side. So 
regarded it would seem that Browning was 
able to appreciate the genius of Aristophanes 
as well as that of Euripides, but that he con- 
sidered Aristophanes to have value chiefly 
in relation to his age, as the artistic mouth- 
piece of its long - estabhshed usages, while 
Euripides had caught the breath of the future, 
and was the mirror of the prophetic impulses 
of his age rather than of its dominant civiliza- 
tion. 

It is not improbable that Landor's fas- 
cinating portrayal of the brilliant Aspasia may 
have had some influence upon Browning's con- 
ception of Balaustion, upon the intellectual side 
at least. Alcibiades says that many people 
think her language as pure and elegant as 
Pericles, and Pericles says she was never seen 
out of temper or forgetful of what argument to 
urge first and most forcibly. When aU is said, 
however, it may be that the "halo irised 
around" Balaustion's head was due, more than 
to any one else, to the influence of the memory 
of Mrs. Browning, of whom she is made to say 
with a subhme disregard of its anachronism: 

"I know the poetess who graved in gold. 
Among her glories that shall never fade, 
This style and title for Euripides, 
The Human with his droppings of warm tears, " 




Walter Savage Landor 



I 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 331 

After such a study of Greek life as this, 
wherein every available incident in history, 
every episode in the plays of Aristophanes 
bearing on the subject, every contemporary 
allusion are all woven together with such 
consummate skill that the very soul and body 
of the time is imaged forth, the classical poems 
of the other great names of the century seem 
almost like child's play. Landor's poems on 
Greek subjects sound like imitations in in- 
ferior material of antiquity. Arnold's are 
even duller. Swinburne tells his Greek tales 
in an endless flow of rhythmical, musical verse, 
which occasionally rises into the realm of 
having something to say. Morris tells his 
at equal length in a manner suggestive of 
Chaucer without Chaucer's snap, but where 
among them all is there such a bit of sting- 
ing life as in " Pheidippedes " or "Echetlos.^" 

Tennyson has, it is true, written some al- 
together exquisite verse, upon classical themes, 
and in every case the poems are not descrip- 
tive nor dramatic, but are dramatic solilo- 
quies, thus approaching in form Browning's 
dramatic idyls. One of the most beautiful of 
these is "(Enone." There we have a mere 
tradition enlarged upon and the feelings of 
QEnone upon the desertion of Paris ex- 
pressed with a richness of emotional fervor 



332 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

in a setting of appropriate nature imagery 
which carries us back to the idyls of Theocritus. 
"Ulysses," again gives the psychology of a 
wanderer who has become so habituated to 
adventures that he is quite incapable of 
settling down with Penelope for the remainder 
of his life. One cannot quite forgive the poet 
for calHiTg the ever youthful and beautiful 
Penelope, whose hand was sought by so many 
suitors, and who, although twenty years had 
passed, might still be quite young, an ''aged 
wife." It has always seemed to the writer 
like a wholly unnecessary stab at a very 
beautiful story, and the poem would have 
been just as effective if Ulysses' hunger for 
lands beyond the sun had not been coupled 
with any scorn of Penelope, but with a feeling 
of pain that again Fate must take him away 
from her. Aside from this note of bad taste — 
bad, because it shadows a picture of faith- 
fulness, cherished as an almost universal 
possession of humanity — the poem is fine. 
There is also, though not Greek, the remark- 
able study of Lucretius going mad from the 
effects of his wife's love philter, in which 
the most fascinating glimpses of his philosophy 
of atoms are caught amid his maniacal wan- 
derings, and, last, the very beautiful Demeter 
and Persephone, 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 333 

These are as unique in their way as Brown- 
ing's Greek poems are in theirs, standing 
quite apart from such work as Morris', or 
Swinburne's, not only because of their haunt- 
ing music, which even Swinburne cannot equal, 
but because of a deeper vein of thought run- 
ning through them. As far as thought is con- 
cerned, however, all pale in significance the 
moment they are placed in juxtaposition with 
any of Browning's classical productions. 

Not the least interesting of Browning's 
classical poems is ^'Ixion." In his treat- 
ment of the myth of Ixion he proves him- 
self a true child of the Greeks, not that he 
makes any slavish attempt to reproduce a 
Greek atmosphere as it existed in the life- 
time of Greek poetry, but he exercises that 
prerogative which the Greek poets always 
claimed, of interpreting a myth to suit their 
own ends. 

It has become a sort of critical axiom to 
compare Browning's ''Ixion" with the "Pro- 
metheus" of literature. This is one of those 
catching analogies which lay hold upon the 
mind, and cannot be shaken off again with- 
out considerable difficulty. Mr. Arthur Sy- 
mons first spoke of the resemblance; and 
almost every other critic with the exception of 
Mr. Nettleship has dwelt mainly upon that 



334 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

aspect of the poem which bears out the com- 
parison. But why, it might very weU be 
asked, did Browning, if he intended to make 
another Prometheus, choose Ixion for his 
theme? And the answer is evident, because 
in the story of Ixion he found some quality 
different from any which existed in the story 
of Prometheus, and which was especially 
suited to the end he had in view. 

The kernel of the myth of Prometheus as 
developed by iEschylus is proud, unflinching 
suffering of punishment, inflicted, not by a 
god justly angry for sin against himseff, but 
by a god sternly mindful of his own prerog- 
atives, whose only right is might, and jealous 
of any interference in behalf of the race which 
he detested — the race of man. Thus Prome- 
theus stands out as a hero in Greek mythology, 
a mediator between man and the blind anger 
of a god of unconditional power; and Prome- 
theus, with an equally blind belief in Fate, 
accepts while he defies the punishment in- 
flicted by Zeus. He tacitly acknowledges the 
right of Zeus to punish him, since he confesses 
his deeds to be sins, but, nevertheless, he would 
do exactly the same thing over again: 

*'By my choice, my choice 
I freely sinned — I will confess my sin — 
And helping mortals found mine own despair. " 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 335 

On the other hand, Ixion never appears 
in classic lore as a hero. He has been called 
the "Cain" of Greece, because he was the 
first, as Pindar says, "to introduce to mortal 
men the murder of kin not unaccompanied by 
cunning." Zeus appears, however, to have 
shown more leniency to him for the crime of 
killing his father-in-law than he ever did to 
Prometheus, as he not only purified him from 
murder, but invited him to a seat among the 
gods. But to quote Pindar again, "he found 
his prosperity too great to bear, when with 
infatuate mind he became enamored of 
Hera. . . . Thus his conceit drave him 
to an act of enormous folly, but the man soon 
suffered his deserts, and received an exquisite 
torture." Ixion, then, in direct contrast 
to Prometheus, stands forth an embodiment 
of the most detestable of sins, perpetrated 
simply for personal ends. To depict such 
a man as this in an attitude of defiance, 
and yet to justify his defiance, is a far more 
difficult problem than to justify the already 
admired heroism of Prometheus. It is en- 
tirely characteristic of Browning that he 
should choose perhaps the most unprincipled 
character in the whole range of Greek my- 
thology as his hero. He is not content, like 
Emerson, with simply telhng us that "in the 



336 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

mud and scum of things there alway, alway 
something sings"; his aim is ever to bring 
us face to face with reahty, and to open our 
ears that we may hear for ourselves this 
universal song. In fine, Browning chose 
Ixion and not another, because he wanted 
above all things an unquestioned sinner; 
and the task he set himseK was to show the 
use of sin and at the same time exonerate 
the sinner from the eternal consequences of 
his act. 

So mystical is the language of the poem 
that it is extremely difficult to trace behind 
it the subtle reasoning. Mr. Nettleship has 
given by far the best exposition of the poem, 
though even he does not seize all its sug- 
gestiveness. 

Ixion, the sinner, suffering eternal torment, 
questions the justice of such torment. The 
first very important conclusion to which he 
comes, and it is one entirely in accord with 
science, is that sin is an aberration of sense, 
merely the result of external conditions in 
which the soul of man has no active part. 
The soul simply dreams, but once fully 
awakened, it would free itself from this bond- 
age of sense if it were allowed to do so. Ixion 
argues that it is Zeus that hath made him and 
not he himself, and if he has sinned it is 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 337 

through the bodily senses which Zeus has 
conferred upon him, and if he were the friendly 
and all-powerful god which he claimed himself 
to be and which Ixion believed he was, why 
did he allow these distractions of sense to lead 
him (Ixion) into sin which could only be ex- 
piated by eternal punishment? Without body 
there would have been nothing to obstruct 
his soul's rush upon the real; and with one 
touch of pitying power Zeus might have dis- 
persed "this film-work, eye's and ear's." It 
is entirely the fault of Zeus that he had sinned ; 
and having done so will external torture make 
him repent any more who has repented 
already? This is the old, old problem that 
has taxed the brains of many a philosopher 
and the faith of many a theologian — the 
reconcilement of the existence of evil with an 
omnipotent God. Then follows a comparison 
between the actions of Zeus, a god, and of 
Ixion, the human king; and Ixion declares 
could he have known all, as Zeus does, he 
would have warded off evil from his subjects, 
would have seen that they Were trained aright 
from the first — in fact, would not have 
allowed evil to exist, or failing this, could he 
have seen the heart of the criminals and 
reaUzed how they repented he would have 
given them a chance to retrieve their past. 



338 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

Ixion now realizes that his human ideal is 
higher than that of Zeus. He had imagined 
him possessed of human quahties, and finds 
his quahties are less than human. What must 
be the inevitable result of arriving at such a 
conclusion.'^ It means the dethronement of 
the god, and either a lapse into hopeless 
atheism or the recognition that the concep- 
tion formed of the god was that of the human 
mind at an earlier stage of understanding. 
This conception becomes crystallized into an 
anthropomorphic god; but the mind of man 
goes onward on its way to higher heights, and 
lo! there comes a day when the god-ideal of 
the past is lower than the human ideal of the 
present. It is such a crisis as this that Ixion 
has arrived at, and his faith is equal to the 
strain. Since Zeus is man's own mind-made 
god, Ixion's tortures must be the natural con- 
sequences of his sin, and not the arbitrary 
punishment of a god; and what is Ixion's sin 
as Browning has mterpreted the myth.f* 

The sin is that of arrogance. Ixion, a mere 
man, strives to be on an equahty with gods. 
In Lucian's dialogue between Hera and Zeus 
the stress is laid upon the arrogance of Ixion. 
Jupiter declares that Ixion shall pay the 
"penalty not of his love — for that surely is 
not so dreadful a crime — but of his loud 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS S39 

boasting." Browning raises the sin into a 
rarer atmosphere than that of the Greek or 
Latin. Zeus and Hera may be taken to rep- 
resent the attributes of power and love as 
conceived by man in Divinity; and Ixion, 
symboUc of man, arrogantly supposes that he 
is capable of putting himself on an equality 
with Divinity by conceiving the entire nature 
of Divinity, that out of his finite mind he can 
construct the absolute god, and this is the sin, 
or, better, the aberration of sense, which results 
in the crystalhzation of his former inadequate 
conceptions into an anthropomorphic god, 
and causes his own downfall. Ixion, now 
fully aroused to the fact that the god he has 
been defying is but his own miserable concep- 
tion of God, realizes that the suffering caused 
by this conception of God is the very means 
through which man struggles toward higher 
ideals: through evil he is brought to a rec- 
ognition of the good; from his agony is bred 
the rainbow of hope, which ever shines above 
him glorified by the Hght from a Purity far 
beyond, all - unobstructed. Successive con- 
ceptions of God must sink; but man, how- 
ever misled by them, must finally burst 
through the obstructions of sense, freeing his 
spirit to aspire forever toward the light. 

"Ixion," then, is not merely an argument 



340 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

against eternal punishment, nor a picture of 
heroic suffering, though he who will may draw 
these lessons from it, but it is a tremendous 
symbol of the spiritual development of man. 
Pure in its essence, the spirit learns through 
the obstructions of sense to yearn forever for 
higher attainment, and this constitutes the 
especial blessedness of man as contrasted with 
Zeus. He, like the Pythagorean Father of 
Number, is the conditioned one; but man is 
privileged through all seons of time to break 
through conditions, and thus Ixion, trium- 
phant, exclaims: 

"Where light, where light is, aspiring 
Thither I rise, whilst thou — Zeus, keep the godship and 

sink." 

In these poems, as in other phases of his work, 
Browning runs the gamut of life, of art, and 
of thought. He has set a new standard in 
regard to the handling of classic material, 
one which should open the field of classic 
lore afresh to future poets. Instead of try- 
ing to ape in more or less ineffectual imita- 
tions the style and thought of the great 
masters of antiquity, or simply use their 
mythology as a well-spring of romance to be 
clothed in whatever vagaries of style the 
individual poet might be able to invent, the 



CLASSIC SURVIVALS 341 

aim of the future poet should be to recon- 
struct the Hfe and thought of that wonderful 
civiUzation. One playwright, at least, has 
made a step in the right direction. I refer 
to Gilbert Murray, whose classical scholarship 
has thrown so much light upon the vexed 
questions of Browning's attitude toward Eu- 
ripides, and who, in his "Andromache," has 
written a play, not in classical, but in modern 
form, which seems to bring us more into touch 
with the life of Homer's day than even Homer 
himself. 



vn 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 



THE division between centuries, thougn 
it be an arbitrary one, does actually 
appear to mark fairly definite steps in human 
development, and already there are indica- 
tions that the twentieth century is taking on 
a character quite distinct from that of the 
nineteenth. It looks now as if it were to be 
the century of the reahzation of mankind's 
wildest dreams in the past. Air navigation, 
the elixir of Ufe, perpetual motion, are some 
of them. About the first no one can now 
have much skepticism, for if airships are not 
as yet common objects of the everyday sky, 
they, at least, occupy a large share of atten- 
tion in the magazines, while the aviator, a 
being who did not exist in the last century, is 
now the hero of the hour. 

With regard to the second, though no 
sparkling ehxir distilled from some rare flower, 
such as that Septimius Felton sought in 
Hawthorne's tale, has been discovered, the 
great scientist Metchnikoff has brought to 

342 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 343 

light a preserver of youth more in keeping 
with the science of the day — namely, a microbe, 
possessing power to destroy the poison that 
produces age. Whether perpetual youth is 
to lead to immortality in the flesh will prob- 
ably be a question for other centuries to 
discuss, though if Metchnikoff is right there 
is no reason why we should not retain our 
youthfulness all our lives in this century. 
Add to this, machinery run by the perpetual 
energy of radium — a possibility, if radium 
can ever be obtained in sufficient quantities 
to supply the needed power to keep modern 
civilization on its ceaseless *'go" — and we may 
picture to ourselves, before the end of the 
twentieth century, youths of ninety starting 
forth on voyages of thirty years in radium 
ships, which, hke the fairy watch of the Prin- 
cess Rossetta, will never go wrong and will 
never need to be wound up, metaphorically 
speaking. It would almost seem as if some 
method of enlarging the earth, or of arrang- 
ing voyages to the moon and Mars, would be 
necessary in order to give the new radium 
machinery sufficient scope for its activities. 
However, at present it seems unhkely that it 
will ever be possible to produce more than 
half an ounce of radium a year. As it would 
take a ton to run one ship for thirty years, and 



? 



344 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

the expense would be something almost in- 
calculable, it is a dream only to be realized 
by the inventing of methods by which the 
feeble radio-activity known to exist in many 
other substances can be utihzed. These 
methods have not yet been invented, but 
it is a good deal that they have been 
thought of, for what man thinks of he gener- 
ally seems to have the indomitable energy to 
accomplish. 

How such inventions as these, even if very 
far from attaining success, may afifect the 
social and thought ideals of the century it is 
impossible to say. The automobile is said to 
have brought about a change, not altogether 
beneficial, to the intellectual and artistic 
growth of society to-day. It has taken such 
powerful possession of the minds of humanity 
that homes have been mortgaged, music and 
books and pictures have been sacrificed, in 
order that all the money procurable could be 
put into the machines and their running. 
You hear complaints against the automobile 
from writers, musicians, and artists. The only 
thing that really has a good sale is the auto- 
mobile. What eflfect rushing about so con- 
stantly at high speed in the open air is to 
have on the brain-power is another interesting 
problem. Perhaps it is this growing subjec- 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 345 

tive delight in motion which is causing the 
development of an artistic taste dependent 
upon motion as its chief element. Motion 
pictures and dancing appeal to the public 
with such insistence that plays will not hold 
successfully without an almost exaggerated 
attention to action and dancing, which, when- 
ever it is at all possible, make a part of 
the "show." 

The pictures of the new school of pain- 
ters, the futurists, also reveal the craze for 
motion. They try to put into their pictures 
the successive and decidedly blurred impres- 
sions, from the illustrations I have seen, of 
scenes in motion, with a result that is certainly 
startling and interesting, but which it is 
difficult to believe is beautiful. One has a 
horrible suspicion that all this emphasis up- 
on motion in art is a running to seed of the 
art which appeals to the eye and with a 
psychological content derived principally from 
sensation. Perhaps in some other century, 
fatuous humanity will like to listen to operas 
or to plays in a pitch-dark theatre. This will 
represent the going to seed of the art which 
appeals to the ear, and a psychological con- 
tent derived principally from sentiment. 

While movement seems to be the keynote 
of the century thus far, in its everyday life 



346 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

and in its art manifestation, very interesting 
developments are taking place in scientific 
theories and in philosophy, as well as in the 
world of education and sociology. 

In relation to Browning and the other chief 
poets of the nineteenth century, the only 
aspects of interest are in the region of thought 
and social ideals. 

With the exception of Tennyson, no other 
of the chief poets of the century need be con- 
sidered in this connection with Browning, 
because, as we have seen in a previous chapter, 
they reflected on the whole the prevalent dis- 
belief and doubt of the century which came 
with the revelations of science. Many people 
have regarded Tennyson as the chief prophet 
of the century. He seems, however, to the 
present writer to have held an attitude which 
reflected the general tone of religious aspira- 
tion in the century, rather than one which 
struck a new note indicating the direction 
in which future religious aspiration might 
turn. 

The conflict in his mind is between doubt 
and belief. To doubt he has often given the 
most poignant expression, as in his poem called 
*' Despair." The story is of a man and his 
wife who have lost all religious faith through 
the reading of scientific books: 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 347 

"Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings? 

O, yes. 
For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular 

press, 
When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whoop- 
ing at noon, 
And doubt is the lord of the dunghill, and crows to the sun 

and the moon. 
Till the sun and the moon of our science are both of them 

turned into blood. 
And hope will have broken her heart, running after a 

shadow of good; 
For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter'd from 

hand to hand — 
We have knelt in your know-all chapel, too, looking over the 

sand." 

If the effect of science was bad upon this 
weak-minded pair, the effect of rehgion as it 
had been taught them was no better. The 
absolute hopelessness of a blasted faith in 
all things reaches its climax in the following 
stanzas: 

"And the suns of the limitless universe sparkled and shone 

in the sky. 
Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light 

was a lie — 
Bright as with deathless hope — but, however they sparkled 

and shone. 
The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of 

woe Hke our own — 
No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below, 
A fiery scroU written over with lamentation and woe. 



348 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

"See, we were nursed in the drear nigh tf old of your fatahst 

creed, 
And we turn'd to the growing dawn, we had hoped for a dawn 

indeed, 
When the hght of a sun that was coming would scatter the 

ghosts of the past. 
And the cramping creeds that had madden'd the peoples 

would vanish at last. 
And we broke away from the Christ, our human brother and 

friend. 
For He spoke, or it seemed that He spoke, of a hell without 

help, without end. 

"Hoped for a dawn, and it came, but the promise had faded 

away; 
We had passed from a cheerless night to the glare of a drearier 

day; 
He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire. 
The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire — ■ 
Of a worm as it writhes in a world of the weak trodden down 

by the strong, 
Of a dying worm in a world, all massacre, murder and wrong.'* 

There are many hopeful passages in Tenny- 
son to offset such deep pessimism as is ex- 
pressed in this one, which, moreover, being 
a dramatic utterance it must be remembered, 
does not reflect any settled conviction on the 
poet's part, though it shows him liable to 
moods of the most extreme doubt. In ''The 
Ancient Sage" the agnostic spirit of the 
century is fully described, but instead of 
leading to a mood of despair, the mood is one 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 349 

of clinging to faith in the face of all doubt. 
The sage speaking, says: 

**Thou canst not prove the Nameless, my son. 
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in. 
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone. 
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one. 
Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no. 
Nor yet that thou art mortal — nay, my son. 
Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee. 
Are not thyself in converse with thyself. 
For nothing worthy proving can be proven. 
Nor yet disproven. Wherefore thou be wise. 
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt. 
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith! 
She reels not in the storm of warring words. 
She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No.' 
She sees the best that ghmmers thro' the worst. 
She feels the sun is hid but for a night. 
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud. 
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls. 
She hears the lark within the songless egg. 
She finds the fountain where they wail'd Mirage!'* 

There is nothing here more reassuring than 
a statement made by the sage, based upon 
no argument, nor revelation, nor intuition — 
nothing but the utilitarian doctrine that it 
will be wiser to cling to Faith beyond Faith! 
This is a sample of the sort of assurance in 
the reality of God and of immortality which 
Tennyson was in the habit of giving. In the 



350 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

poem called ''Vastness" he presents with 
genuine power a pessimistic view of humanity 
and civilization in all its various phases — 
all of no use, neither the good any more than 
the bad, "if we all of us end but in being 
our own corpse-coffins at last?" The effect of 
the dismal atmosphere of the poem as a 
whole is supposed to be dissipated by the last 
stanza : 

*' Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him forever: 
the dead are not dead but ahve.'* 

The conviction here of immortaUty through 
personal love is born of the feehng that his 
friend whom he has loved must hve forever. 
The note of *'In Memoriam" is sounded 
again. Tennyson's philosophy, in a nutshell, 
seems to be that doubts are not so much over- 
come as quieted by a struggling faith in the 
truths of religion, of which the chief assurance 
lies in the thought of personal love. Not as 
in Browning, that human love, because of its 
beauty and ecstasy, is a symbol of divine 
love, but because of its wish to be reunited 
to the one beloved is an earnest of continued 
existence. While Tennyson's poetry is sat- 
urated with allusions to the science of the 
century, it seems to be ever the dark side of 
the doctrine of evolution that is dwelt upon 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 351 

by him, while his rehgion is held to in spite of 
the truths of science, not because the truths 
of science have given him in any way a new 
revelation of beauty. 

Much more emphasis has been laid upon 
Tennyson's importance as a prophet in re- 
ligious matters than seems to the present 
writer warranted. He did not even keep 
pace with the thought of the century, though 
his poetry undoubtedly reflected the liberalized 
theology of the earlier years of the second half 
of the century. As Joseph Jacobs says, "In 
Memoriam" has been to the Broad Church 
Movement what the "Christian Year" has 
been to the High Church. But where is the 
Broad Church now.^^ Tennyson was, on the 
whole, adverse to evolution, which has been 
almost an instinct in English speculation for 
the last quarter of a century. So far as he 
was the voice of his age in speculative mat- 
ters, he only represented the thought of the 
"sixties." 

What vision Tennyson did have came 
not through intuition or the higher reason, 
but through his psychic power of self- 
hypnotism. In "The Ancient Sage" is a 
passage describing the sort of trance into 
which he could evidently cause himself to 
fall: 



352 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

"For more than once when I 
Sat all alone, revolving in myself 

The word that is the symbol of myself, 

The mortal limit of the self was loosed. 

And passed into the Nameless, as a cloud 

Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs 

Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, 

But utter clearness, and thro' loss of self. 

The gain of such large life as match'd with ours 

Were sun to spark — unshadowable in words. 

Themselves but shadows of a shadow world." 

Such trances have been of common oc- 
currence in the reHgious Hfe of the world, as 
Professor James has shown so exhaustively in 
his great book, "Varieties of Religious Ex- 
perience." And in that book, too, it is 
maintained, against the scientific conclusions, 
that such ecstasies "signify nothing but sug- 
gested and imitated hypnoid states, on an 
intellectual basis of superstition, and a cor- 
poral one of degeneration and hysteria," that 
mystical states have an actual value as rev- 
elations of the truth. After passing in 
review many examples of ecstasy and trance, 
from the occasional experiences of the poets 
to the constant experiences of the mediaeval 
mystics and the Hindu Yogis, he finally comes 
to the interesting conclusion that: 

"This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the 
individual and the absolute is the great mystic achievement. 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 353 

In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and 
we become aware of our one-ness. This is the everlasting 
and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by dif- 
ferences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, 
in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find 
the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical 
utterances an eternal unanimity — which ought to make a 
critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the 
mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor 
native land." 

The witness given religion in Tennyson's 
mystical trances is then his most valuable 
contributioi to the speculative thought of the 
century, and in a sense is prophetic of the twen- 
tieth century, because in this century revela- 
tions attained in this way have been given a 
credence long denied them except in the case 
of the uneducated and super-emotional, by a 
man of the sound scholarship and good judg- 
ment of Professor James. 

How fully Browning was a representative 
of the thought of this time, combining as 
he did an intuitional with a scientific out- 
look has already been shown. Evolution 
means for him the progress toward the 
infinite, and is full of beauty and promise. 
The failures in nature and life which fill 
Tennyson with despair furnish to Browning's 
mind a proof of the existence of the absolute, 
or a somewhere beyond, where things will be 



354 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

righted. Observation shows him everywhere 
in the universe the existence of power and 
mystery. The mystery is either that of the 
incomprehensibleness of causes, or is empha- 
sized in the existence of evil. The first leads 
to awe and wonder, and is a constant spur 
to mankind to seek further knowledge, but the 
poet insists that the knowledge so accu- 
mulated is not actual gain, but only a means 
to gain in so far as it keeps bringing home to 
the human mind the fact of its own inade- 
quacy in the discovery of truth. The existence 
of evil leads to the constant effort to over- 
come it, and to sympathy and pity, and as the 
failure of knowledge proves a future of truth 
to be won, so the failure of mankind to attain 
perfection in moral action proves a future of 
goodness to be realized. All this may be 
found either expHcitly or implied in the 
synthetic philosophy of Herbert Spencer, 
whose fundamental principles, despite the fire 
of criticism to which he has been subjected 
from all sides — science, religion, metaphysics, 
each of which felt it could not claim him 
exclusively as its own, yet resenting his 
inclusion of the other two — are now, in 
the first decade of the twentieth century, 
receiving the fullest recognition by such 
masters of the history of nineteenth-century 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 355 

thought as Theodore Merz and Emile Bout- 
roux. 

People often forget that while Spencer 
spent his Hfe upon the knowledge or scientific 
side of human experience, he frequently as- 
serted that there was in the human con- 
sciousness an intuition of the absolute which 
was the only certain knowledge possessed by 
man. Here again Browning was at one with 
Spencer. Discussing the problem of a future 
life in "La Saisiaz," he declares that God and 
the soul are the only facts of which he is 
absolutely certain: 

**I have questioned and am answered. Question, answer 

presuppose 
Two points: that the thing itself which questions, answers 

— isy it knows; 
As it also knows the thing perceived outside itself — a force 
Actual ere its own beginning, operative through its course. 
Unaffected by its end — that this thing likewise needs must 

be; 
Call this — God, then, call that — soul, and both — the 

only facts for me. 
Prove them facts? That they o'erpass my power of proving, 
proves them such." 

To this scientific and metaphysical side 
Browning adds, as has also already been 
pointed out, a mystical side based upon 
feeling. His revelations of divinity do not 



356 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

come by means of self-induced trances, as 
Tennyson's seem to have come, but through 
the mystery of feehng. This mystical state 
seems to have been his habitual one, if we may 
judge by its prominence in his poetry. He 
occasionally descends to the realm of reason, 
as he has in "La Saisiaz," but the true plane 
of his existence is up among the exaltations of 
aspiration and love. His cosmic sense is a 
sense of God as Love, and is the quahty most 
characteristic of the man. It is like, though 
perhaps not identical with, the mysticism of 
Whitman, which seems to have been an 
habitual state. He writes: "There is, apart 
from mere intellect, in the make-up of every 
superior human identity, a wondrous some- 
thing that realizes without argument, fre- 
quently without what is called education 
(though I think it the goal and apex of all 
education deserving the name), an intuition 
of the absolute balance, in time and space, 
of the whole of this multifariousness, this 
revel of fools, and incredible make-believe 
and general unsettledness we call the ivorld; 
a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen 
thread which holds the whole congeries of 
things, all history and time, and all events, 
however trivial, however momentous, like a 
leashed dog in the hand of the hunter." 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 357 

This mystic mood of Browning's which 
underhes his whole work — even a work hke 
''The Ring and the Book," where evil in 
various forms is rampant and seems for the 
time being to conquer — is nowhere more 
fully, and at the same time more co cisely, 
expressed than in his poem "Reverie," one of 
his last, which ends with a full revelation of this 
mystical feeling, from which the less inspired 
reasoning of ''La Saisiaz" is a descent: 

**Eveii as the world its life, 

So have I lived my own — 
Power seen with Love at strife, 

That sure, this dimly shown — 
Good rare and evil rife 

"Whereof the eflFect be — faith 

That, some far day, were found 
Ripeness in things now rathe. 

Wrong righted, each chain unbound. 
Renewal born out of scathe. 

"Why faith — but to hft the load. 

To leaven the lump, where lies 
Mind prostrate through knowledge owed 

To the loveless Power it tries 
To withstand, how vain! In flowed 

**Ever resistless fact: 

No more than the passive clay 
Disputes the potter's act, 

Could the whelmed mind disobey 
Knowledge the cataract. 



358 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

"But, perfect in every part, 

Has the potter's moulded shape, 

Leap of man's quickened heart. 
Throe of his thought's escape. 

Stings of his soul which dart, 

"Through the barrier of flesh, till keen 

She climbs from the calm and clear. 
Through turbidity all between 

From the known to the unknown here. 
Heaven's * Shall be' from Earth's 'Has been'? 

"Then hfe is — to wake not sleep, 

Rise and not rest, but press 
From earth's level where blindly creep 

Things perfected more or less. 
To the heaven's height, far and steep, 

** Where, amid what strifes and storms 
May wait the adventurous quest. 

Power is Love — transports, transforms. 
Who aspired from worst to best. 

Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms! 

"I have faith such end shall be: 

From the first. Power was — I knew. 
Life has made clear to me 

That, strive but for closer view. 
Love were as plain to see. 

"When see? When there dawns a day, 
If not on the homely earth. 
Then yonder, worlds away. 

Where the strange and new have birth 
And Power comes full in play." 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 359 

Browning has, far more than Tennyson, 
put rehgious speculation upon a basis where 
it may stand irrespective of a belief in the 
revelations of historical Christianity. For 
the central doctrine of Christianity he had 
so profound a reverence that he recurs to it 
again and again in his poetry, and at times 
his feeling seems to carry him to the verge of 
orthodox belief. So near does he come to it 
that many religious critics have been con- 
vinced that he might be claimed as a Christian 
in the orthodox sense of the word. 

A more careful reading, however, of such 
poems as ''The Death in the Desert," and 
''Christmas Eve and Easter Day," upon 
which rest principally the claim of the poet's 
orthodoxy, will reveal that no certain assertion 
of a belief in supernaturalism is made, even 
though the poems are dramatic and it might be 
made without necessarily expressing the feel- 
ing of the poet. What Browning felt was 
that in historical Christianity the highest 
symbol of divine love had been reached. 
Though he may at times have had moods in 
which he would fain have believed true an 
ideal which held for him great beauty, his 
worth for his age was in saving religion, not 
upon a basis of faith, but upon the ground of 
logical arguments deduced from the failure 



360 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

of knowledge, of his personal intuition of God 
and his mystical vision in regard to the na- 
ture of God. 

So complete a synthesis is this that only 
in the present century is its full purport 
likely to be reaUzed. The thought of the 
century is showing everywhere a strong reac- 
tion away from materiahsm and toward relig- 
ious thought. 

Even in the latest stronghold of science, 
psychology, as we have already seen, there is 
no formula which will explain the existence 
of individuality. While the scientists them- 
selves plod on, often quite unconscious that 
they are not dealing with ultimates, the 
thinkers are no longer satisfied with a philos- 
ophy of materialism, and once more it is 
being recognized that the province of philos- 
ophy is to give us God, the soul and immor- 
tality. 

It is especially interesting in this connec- 
tion to observe that Germany, the land of 
destructive biblical criticism, which Brown- 
ing before the middle of the century handled 
with the consummate skill characteristic of 
him, by accepting its historical conclusions 
while conserving the spirit of Christianity, has 
now in the person of Professor Rudolf Eucken 
done an almost similar thing. Like Brown- 




Browning at 77 (1889) 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 361 

ing, he is a strong individualist and believes 
that the development of the soul is the one 
thing of supreme moment. "There is a 
spontaneous springing up of the individual 
spiritual life," he writes, "only within the soul 
of the individual. All social and all histori- 
cal life that does not unceasingly draw from 
this source falls irrecoverably into a state of 
stagnation and desolation. The individual 
can never be reduced to the position of a mere 
member of society, of a church, of a state; 
notwithstanding all external subordination, 
he must assert an inner superiority; each 
spiritual individual is more than the whole 
external world." 

He calls his system "activism/* which 
merely seems to be another way of saying that 
the soul-life is one of aspiration toward moral 
ideals and the will to carry them out. Such a 
life, he thinks, demands a new world and a 
new character in man, and is entirely at 
variance with nature. "Our whole life is an 
indefatigable seeking and pressing forward. 
In seK-consciousness the framework is given 
which has to be filled; in it we have acquired 
only the basis upon which the superstructure 
has to be raised. We have to find experience 
in life itself to reveal something new, to de- 
velop life, to increase its range and depth. 



362 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

The endeavor to advance in spirituality, to 
win through struggle, is the soul of the life 
of the individual and the work of universal 
history." Readers of Browning will cer- 
tainly not feel that there is anything new in 
this. 

In so far, however, as he finds the spiritual 
life at variance with nature he parts com- 
pany with Browning, showing himself to be 
under the influence of the dualism of the past 
which regarded matter and spirit as antago- 
nistic. In Browning's view, matter and spirit 
are the two aspects of God, in the one, power 
being manifested; in the other, love. 

It follows naturally from this, that Eucken 
does not think of evil as a means by which 
good is developed. He prefers to regard it as 
unexplained, and forever with us to be over- 
come. Its reduction to a means of realizing 
the good leads, he thinks, "to a weakening 
wHch threatens to transform the mighty 
world-struggle into an artistic arrangement 
of things and into an effeminate play, and 
which takes away that bitterness from evil 
without which there is no strenuousness in the 
struggle and no vitaKty in life. Thus it re- 
mains true that rehgion does not so much 
explain as presuppose evil." An attempt 
to explain evil, he says, belongs to speculation 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 363 

rather than to rehgion. That he has an 
inkhng of the region to which speculation 
might lead him is shown when it is realized, 
that upon his explanation, as one critic of him 
has said, it might be possible to find "some 
reconciliation in the fact that this world with 
its negations had awakened the spiritual life 
to its absolute aflfirmation, which could, 
therefore, not be in absolute opposition." 

In leaving aside speculation and confining 
himself to what he considers the religious 
aspects of life, he no doubt strengthens himself 
as a leader of those whose speculative powers 
have not yet been developed, or who can put 
one side of the mind to sleep and accept with 
the other half-truths. The more developed 
mind, however, will prefer Browning's greater 
inclusiveness. To possess a complete view 
of life, man must live his own life as a human 
being struggling to overcome the evil, at the 
same time keeping in mind the fact that evil is 
in a sense the raw material provided by God, 
or the Absolute, or whatever name one chooses 
to give to the all-powerful and all-loving, from 
which the active soul of man is to derive a 
richness of beauty and harmony of develop- 
ment not otherwise possible. Eucken's at- 
titude toward Jesus is summed up in a way 
which reminds one strongly of the position 



364 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

taken in the comment made at the end of 
"The Death in the Desert." He writes: 
"The position of the behever in the universal 
Christian Church is grounded upon a relation 
to God whose uniqueness emerges from the 
essential divinity of Jesus; only on this sup- 
position can the personality of Christ stand 
as the unconditional Lord and Master to 
whom the ages must do homage. And while 
the person of Jesus retains a wonderful 
majesty apart from dogma, its greatness is 
confined to the realm of humanity, and what- 
ever of new and divine life it brings to us 
must be potential and capable of realization 
in us all. We therefore see no more in this 
figure the normative and universally valid 
type of all human Ufe, but merely an in- 
comparable individuality which cannot be 
directly imitated. At any rate the figure of 
Jesus, thus understood in all its height and 
pure humanity, can no longer be an object of 
faith and divine honor. All attempts to 
take shelter in a mediating position are 
shattered against a relentless either — or. 
Between man and God there is no inter- 
mediate form of being for us, for we cannot 
sink back into the ancient cult of heroes. If 
Jesus, therefore, is not God, if Christ is not 
the second person in the Trinity, then he is a 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 365 

man; not a man like any average man among 
ourselves, but still man. We can therefore 
honor him as a leader, a hero, a martyr, but 
we cannot directly bind ourselves to him or 
root ourselves in him; we cannot submit to 
him unconditionally. Still less can we make 
him the centre of a cult. To do so from our 
point of view would be nothing else than an 
intolerable deification of a human being." 
The comment at the end of "The Death in 
the Desert" puts a similar question, and 
answers, "Call Christ, then, the illimitable 
God, Or Lost!" But the final word which 
casts a Hght back upon the previous con- 
clusion is "But, 'twas Cerinthus that is lost" 
— the man, in other words, who held the 
heresy that the Christ part only resided in 
Jesus, who was merely human, and that the 
divine part was not crucified, having flown 
away before. Thus it is implied that neither 
those who believe Jesus divine, nor those who 
beKeve him human, are lost, but those who 
try as Cerinthus did to make a compromise. 
The same note is struck in "Christmas Eve," 
and now Professor Eucken takes an exactly 
similar ground in regard to any sort of com- 
promise, coming out boldly, however, as 
Browning does not in this poem, though he 
makes no strong argument against it — in 



366 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

the acceptance of Christ as human. Brown- 
ing's own attitude is expressed as clearly as it 
is anywhere in his work in the epilogue to 
"Dramatis Personse," in which the conclusion 
is entirely in sympathy with that of Eucken: 

"When you see what I tell you — nature dance 
About each man of us, retire, advance. 
As though the pageant's end were to enhance 

"His worth, and — once the Hfe, his product gained — 
Roll away elsewhere, keep the strife sustained, 
And show thus real, a thing the North but feigned — 

"When you acknowledge that one world could do 
All the diverse work, old yet ever new. 
Divide us, each from other, me from you — 

"Why, where*s the need of Temple, when the walls 
O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls 
From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet calls? 

"That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows. 
Or decomposes but to recompose, 
Become my universe that feels and knows." 

The hold which the philosophy of Eucken 
seems to have taken upon the minds of many 
people all over the world shows that it 
must have great elements of strength. That 
there is a partial resemblance between his 
thought, which belongs to the end of the 
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth 
century, and Browning's is certain, but the 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 367 

fact remains that the poet made a synthesis 
of the elements which must go to the forming 
of any complete religious conceptions of the 
future so far in advance of his own century 
that even Eucken is in some respects behind 
it. 

Another interesting instance of Brown- 
ing's presenting a line of reasoning which 
resembles very strongly one phase of present- 
day philosophy is to be found in "Bishop 
Blougram's Apology." The worldly Bishop 
gives voice to good pragmatic doctrine, 
which in a nutshell is, "believe in, or rather 
follow, that ideal which will be of the most use 
to you, and if it turns out not to be successful, 
then try another one." The poet declares 
that Blougram said good things but called 
them by wrong names. If the ideal is a high 
one there is no great danger in such reasoning, 
but it can very easily be turned into sophistical 
arguments for an ideal of hving to thoroughly 
selfish ends, as Blougram actually did. The 
poem might almost be taken as a prophetic 
criticism of the weak aspects of pragmatism. 

The belief in immortality which pervades 
Browning's work often comes out in a form 
suggesting the idea of reincarnation. His 
future for the human soul is not a heaven of 
bliss, but life in other worlds full of activity 



368 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

and aspiration. This note is struck in "Para- 
celsus," where hfe's destiny is described to be 
the chmbing of pleasure's heights forever 
the seeking of a flying point of bUss remote. 
In his last volume the idea is more fully 
brought out in "Rephan." In this it is held 
that a state of perfect bliss might grow 
monotonous, and that a preferable state 
would be to aspire, yet never attain, to the 
object aimed at. The transmigration is from 
''Rephan," where all was merged in a neutral 
Best to Earth, where the soul which had 
been stagnating would have an opportunity to 
strive, not rest. The most beautiful ex- 
pression, however, of the idea of a future of 
many lives is found in ''One Word More": 

*'So it seems: I stand on my attainment. 
This of verse, alone, one life allows me; 
Verse and nothing else have I to give you. 
Other heights in other Kves, God willing: 
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love!" 

Though the theory of reincarnation is so 
ancient a one, and one entirely discredited by 
Christianity, Browning was again expressing 
an ideal which was to be revived in our own 
day. Oriental thought has made it almost 
a commonplace of talk. Many people doubt- 
less speak of what they mean to do in their 
next incarnation without having the thought 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 369 

very deeply imbedded in their consciousness, 
yet the mere fact that one hears the remark 
so often proves what a hold the theory has on 
the imagination of mankind. As Browning 
gives it in '^One Word More," the successive 
incarnations take one on to higher heights — 
" other lives in other worlds. " Thus regarded, 
it is the final outcome of evolution and prog- 
ress, a process to be carried forward in other 
worlds than our own, and has no degrading 
suggestion of a degenerating, because of sin, 
into lower forms of existence. The movement 
is always upward. Thus it has been effected 
by the idea that progress is the law of life, 
and that evolution means, on the whole, 
progress. 

Again, in the liberality of his social ideals, 
combined with an intensest behef in the su- 
premacy of genuine love, he was the forerun- 
ner of Ibsen, who, the world is beginning to 
discover, was not a subverter of high moral 
ideals, as it had thought, but a prophet of the 
new day, when to be untrue to the highest 
ideal of love will be accounted the greatest 
crime of one human being against another. 
From "The Doll's House" to "When We 
That Are Dead Awaken " the same lesson is 
taught. Few people reahze that this is the 
keynote of Browning's teaching, or would be 



370 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

ready to regard him as a prophet of an ideal 
of love which shall come to be seen as the 
true one after the science of eugenics, the 
latest of the exact sciences, has found itself 
as powerless as all other sciences have been to 
touch the reality of life, because amid all 
the mysteries of the universe none is greater 
than the spiritual mystery of love. Among 
writers who are to-day recognizing a part of 
the truth, at least, is Ellen Key, but neither 
she nor Ibsen has insisted in the way that 
Browning has upon the mystical source of 
human love. That Browning is the poet who 
has given the world the utmost certainty of 
God, the soul and immortality, and the most 
inspiring ideals of human love, will be more 
completely recognized in the future. As time 
goes on he will emerge above the tumultuous 
intellectual hfe of the present, which, with its 
enormous increase of knowledge of phenomena, 
bringing with it a fairly titanic mastery of the 
forces of nature, and its generation of multi- 
tudes of ideas upon every conceivable sub- 
ject, many of them trite, many of them 
puerile, and some of them no doubt of genuine 
value, obscures for the time being the 
greatness of any one voice. A Uttle later, 
when the winnowing of ideas shall come. 
Browning will be recognized as one of the 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 371 

greatest men of his own age or any age — a 
man combining knowledge, wisdom, aspira- 
tion, and vision to a marvelous degree. He 
belongs to the master-order of poets, who 
write some things which will pass into the 
popular knowledge of the day, but whose 
serious achievements will be read and studied 
by the cultured and scholarly of aU time. No 
students of Greek literature will feel that they 
can omit from their reading his Greek poems, 
no students of sociology will feel that they 
can omit from their reading "The Ring and 
the Book." Lovers of the drama must ever 
respond to the beauty of "The Blot in the 
'Scutcheon" and "Pippa Passes." Even the 
student of verse technique will not be able to 
leave Browning out of account, and making 
allowances for the fact that the individuality of 
his style sometimes overasserts itself, he will 
reaUze more and more its freshness and its 
vividness, its power of suggestion, and its 
depths of emotional fervor. When the ro- 
manticism of a Keats or a Shelley has 
completely worked itself out in musical ef- 
florescence; from which all thought-content 
has disappeared, there may grow up a school 
of poets which shall, without direct imitation, 
develop poetry along the lines of vigor and 
strength in form, and which shall have for its 



372 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

content a tremendous sense of the worth of 
humanity and an unshakable behef in the 
splendor of its destiny. Virilists might well be 
the name of this future school of poets who 
would hark back to Browning as their in- 
spiration, and a most pleasant contrast would 
they be to the sentimental namby-pambyism 
which passes muster as poetry in much of the 
work of to-day. 

In closing this volume which has been in- 
spired by a deep sense of the abiding great- 
ness of Robert Browning, it has been my 
desire to put on record in some way my 
personal indebtedness to his poetry as an 
inspiration not only to high thinking and 
Hving, but as a genuine revelation to me 
of the rare possibiKties in poetic art, for I 
may almost say that Browning was my first 
poet, and through him, strange as it may seem, 
I came to an appreciation of all other poets. 
His poetry, fortunately for me an early 
influence in my life, awakened my, until then, 
dormant faculty for poetic appreciation. I 
owe him, therefore, a double debt of gratitude: 
Not only has he given me the joy of know- 
ing his own great work, but through him I 
have entered the land of all poesie, led as I 
truly think by his sympathy with the scientific 
dispensation into which I was born. His 



PROPHETIC VISIONS 373 

thought has always seemed so naturally akin 
to my own that it has never seemed to me 
obscure. Finding such thoughts expressed 
through the medium of great poetic genius, 
the beauty of poetic expression was brought 
home to me as it never had been before, and 
hence the poetic expression of aU thought be- 
came a deep pleasure to me. 

So much interpretation and criticism of 
Browning has been given to the world during 
the last twenty years, that further work in 
that direction seems hardly necessary for the 
present. There will for many a day to come 
be those who feel him to be among the greatest 
poets the world has seen, and those who find 
much more to blame in his work than to praise. 

I have tried to give a few suggestions in 
regard to what Robert Browning actually 
was in relation to his time. The nineteenth 
century was so remarkable a one in the 
complexity of its growth, both in practical 
affairs and in intellectual developments, that 
it has been possible in the space of one volume 
to touch only upon the most important aspects 
imder each division, and to try to show what 
measure of influence important movements 
had in the molding of the poet's genius. 

Though in the nature of the case the treat- 
ment could not be exhaustive, I hope to 



374 BROWNING AND HIS CENTURY 

have opened out a sufficient number of path- 
ways into the fascinating vistas of the nine- 
teenth century in its relation to Browning to 
inspire others to make further excursions 
for themselves; and, above all, I hope I may 
have added at least one stone to the cairn 
which many, past and to come, are building 
to his fame. 

THE END 



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